PULPIT ADVERTISING

Advertising is a real American art, and I find myself able to appreciate its efforts to convince and motivate, to wheedle and to bludgeon, to insinuate and to dramatize. But I don’t think that advertising has a place everywhere and the pulpit is one place where it ought never to appear!

I’m not suggesting that pulpits are being pressured to recommend certain brands of soap or beer, but I do know that several times each year I’m “told” (“we know that this cause has your complete endorsement,” “as a minister in our church you will want to stand back of this project,” etc.) to remember a certain campaign for funds in my pastoral prayer, to preach a “special sermon” on this or that phase of “Kingdom activity” represented by this institution or another.

No one can maintain, of course, that many of the various causes and institutions which press for pulpit attention arc not good. It is good to institute and maintain Christian day schools and colleges, it is good to work for Bible distribution, it is good to promote the cause of Christ in the areas of labor and capital. And so we might continue!

But it is not good to degrade the official worship of the church by making it a kind of advertising medium for these things. Naturally, good preaching will result in the development of Christian service in every sphere of life. But this development must come out of the preaching of God’s Word, and must never depend on tactics or techniques which suggest that these projects stand by themselves.

It seems to me that if preachers would be encouraged to preach that Word fearlessly and faithfully no Christian cause could lack for anything so long as God’s people have means.

J.H.P.

FOOTBALL HUDDLE?

It looked like a football huddle. Only it was in church. Up front. The minister had left the pulpit and was down front, facing the congregation. Close to him were a man and a woman, their backs to the congregation. An elder completed the circle by standing at the side. The attention of the four was focused on the middle of this circle, where one of the men held something. But what was it: a football? It could have been, but again, this was in church. A paper signal was passed from the one holding the bundle to the pastor, who seemed to be the quarterback. There was a mysterious motion of the arms which some churchgoers were able to see if they were lucky enough to sit on the side down front, where they could peer through cracks of the circle. Then the quarterback gave the orders: “I baptize you…” Oh, so that was what it was, Dot a football huddle after all! Well, why didn’t they let the whole church in on the secret? Why didn’t the pastor have the parents face the congregation when their baby was being baptized? After all, the Belgic Confession says that the sacraments are visible signs and seals. nut there wasn’t much visible in that football huddle—except for the minister, elder, and parents. The sacrament of infant baptism is not a private but a church affair and for the welfare of the whole congregation. Therefore, away with the huddles and let the sacrament of baptism be truly visible.

E.H.P.

PRAYER IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The key sentence in the recent Supreme Court decision on prayer in the public schools is this, it seems to me: “It is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as part of a religious program carried on by government.”

This opinion, written by Justice Black, knocked out the so-called Regents’ prayer from the school program of the community of New Hyde Park, New York. The opinion argues that such practices are in violation of the strictures on “an establishment of religion” expressed in the first amendment’ to the United States Constitution.

The particular prayer involved has had most of its meaningful religious substance pretty well strained out. This is the prayer: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.” It is obvious that this prayer was composed in an effort to avoid any offense to any religious group. It is an effort to meet the demand for some religious activity in the public schools. Evidently it was felt that a carefully composed prayer could meet these requirements much more safely than a voluntary prayer by the teacher. But one cannot escape the logic of the court’s majority opinion. It surely is not the business of a governmental unit to compose prayers for use by the public in a government-sponsored system of education.

So the area covered by this majority is rather restricted, ft is limited to prayers composed by an official government agency for use in a government program. But an important question comes to the fore. Jf the state Board of Regents (in New York State) together with the local school board cannot under law prescribe prayers for use in the public schools, then docs not this also apply to the teacher, who is also in a very real sense a representative of that government? If the Board of Regents together with the local school board may not prescribe prayers for use in the schools, then by the same logic it would seem that the teacher may not impose her religion through prayer upon the classroom either. Hence, although this particular Supreme Court decision is limited in its scope, it seems to the undersigned that it carries much broader implications: which may very well come to light in further deciSions on this subject. Indeed, very broad implications for the banishment of religious exercises from all governmental functions: are very clearly stated in the concurring opinion of Justice Douglas, who states that the government may not in any way finance ally kind of religious exercise.

This opinion again points up the serious problem involved in public school education in this country. There is strong allegiance to a religious tradition in the United States. Those who honor that tradition are disturbed by the Supreme Court decision. But a simple fact asserts itself in this whole matter, as it has in previous decisions on public schools and religion. The simple fact is this that there is no such thing as religion in general. Religion always means a particular religion, a particular set of beliefs and practices. And the government may not and cannot further a particular faith, unless we have a state church. But such a development is flatly ruled out by the “establishment of religion” clause in the first amendment.

Thus those who want the American religious tradition brought to expression in the public schools arc caught in a dilemma. What is the way out of this dilemma? The way out is clear, but it is one which hosts of Americans do not see. The way out is to acknowledge that the sponsoring and maintaining of schools is not the state’s business. This is the responsibility of the home. To insist that there be schools is the state’s proper concern. But the actual carrying on of an educational program should not be regarded as the state’s business. Cutting across this judgment is the fact that sound religion is a total matter. It must imbue all of life with meaning, with purpose and with power. Government-sponsored education violates this real character of religion and life. Hence the dilemma in which the religious people who send their children to the public schools find themselves. And hence the necessity of maintaining parent-controlled Christian schools is again underscored.

E.H.

“WE HAD A GOOD TIME!”

I overheard this conversation recently: “Where did you go to church when you were on your vacation?” “Oh, we went to a kind of Methodist church in the morning they didn’t have a service in the evening. But we really had a good time!” You might be wondering, “What could possibly be wrong with those remarks?” The answer is, Nothing. And yet we could also say. Everything!

Exegesis is the science of interpretation, and a cold science it is, especially the way we work at it. Our children and young people aren’t foolish enough, however, to exegete things coldly and objectively. They know more than simply that which the words might literally say.

For them that conversation means this: Going to one’s own church on a given Sunday is routine, ordinary, uninspiring, good only if you aren’t doing something special. It might be pleasant, but it doesn’t have to be. “To have a good time” requires that we get away from this ordinary kind of thing—even though it means that the pure preaching of the Word (Belgic Confession, art. 29) must be sacrificed. At least: it doesn’t really injure the possibilities of a “good time” if we must go without it for a while.

Children reared in this kind of atmosphere can scarcely be blamed if they never get to know the real joys of God’s house, and if they decide for themselves to ignore the real demands of a re-formed and re-forming Church!

J.H.P.

INFALLIBILITY DELIMITED

A writer in the Reformed Journal of Nov. ‘59, p. 15, sought (unconvincingly, we think) to show that the infallibility of Scripture is delimited to the “plateau of faith and morals.” After a forced appeal to Articles II–VII of our Confession, he turned to one of his “favorite proof-texts,” Psalm 19, comparing the first section with the last. Of the latter he exclaimed: “This is the Bible’s habitat—according to Psalm 19. Here all its excellencies lie. all its distinguishing features, also that of infallibility.” If that does not imply doubt or denial of the full infallibility of Psalm 19:1–6, what can he mean? (His published reply to criticism gave no light on that.)

Although that article is not recent, it is here recalled because that same thought of delimited infallibility seems such an outstanding and persistent characteristic of the whole discussion.

Whenever suggestions have been either implicit or explicit that in details which seem “peripheral” or “not germane,” errors might have been “allowed” in the autographa, we meet the idea that infallibility is delimited to Scripture’s central message.

When it is advocated that we draw up our conclusions about inspiration and infallibility from a study of all the “phenomena” of Scripture rather than bowing unreservedly before its clear statements on its full inspiration, implying full infallibility, then again we meet the delimitation imposed by human deductions.

That general and recurring idea reappears in “Infallibility 1961” (Ref. Journal, Nov. ‘62, p. 9) which posits (A study committee member has written against this.) that the “Infallibility Report,” approved by Synod ‘61, shows “that words like accuracy, consistency, and inerrancy have an important qualification when they are applied to the historical, psychological, and phenomenological statements of Scripture…” It asks (assuming the fact): “To what extent does the revelatory purpose of sacred history allow for (merely) historical inaccuracy?”

But would such “delimited infallibility” still be real infallibility? Could fallible and variable human minds mark out the line(s) of such delimitation?

The Report, approved by our last Synod says: “The Scripture to its whole extent and in all its parts speaks with divine authority and with divine infallibility,” commending the statement of Augustine, quoted by DeBres: In my opinion Scripture has such a value that I firmly believe none of its authors made a mistake in writing. And if some of its parts might seem to be in conflict with the truth, then I hold that an error has crept into the manuscript or that the translation is not quite correct or that I don’t understand it” (Agenda, pp. 189, 163).

“Infallibility 1961” includes a paragraph which, while reassuring in one way, is painful and puzzling too: “We might say that there are historical inaccuracies in Scripture only in the same sense that there are nonsense statements in Scripture. Many statements in Scripture are complete nonsense when judged from a strictly literal point of view.”

Why should we in any sense “admit” of nonsense in the teaching of Scripture?

C. Holtrop