Christianity Today 1964

by allsaintsdeacon

My mother is packing up and preparing to move out of her house. She has been passing along tidbits she finds while emptying old file drawers of their memorabilia. One of these was a yellowing copy of Christianity Today dated October 9, 1964 (cover price 25 cents).

The lead article asked, “Dare We Hope for Renewal?” Author T. Leo Brannon declared “that stagnation and ineffectiveness are prevalent in vast segments of the modern Church can hardly be disputed,” and “there seems to be a false hope for revitalization of the Church in the union of denominations.”

It is interesting that this was written four years after Fr. Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal priest in Seattle, Washington, had become one of the early leaders of the charismatic renewal that soon swept churches in the 1960’s and 70’s. It is also interesting because the same issue of the magazine carried a report from the first British Faith and Order Conference at Nottingham University which, to the surprise of the participants, ending up proposing an audacious merger of British churches by the year 1980. The call did not extend to the Roman Catholics, of course. And the closing speaker raised doubts about Billy Graham’s “presentation and understanding of the Gospel.” Thus there were haunting clues to the failure of that vision of unity to arrive on schedule.

Clues of another sort were included in a report of Princeton University’s President Robert F. Goheen who announced that the new freshmen class that year would be the first to enter Princeton free of the traditional requirement of attending religious exercises. “The maturing and shaping of the moral and spiritual structure of your lives must be largely your own affair,” he said, though, of course, no such assumption of the efficacy of such independent study was made on behalf of the remaining curriculum.

Christianity Today was wrapping up its tenth year of publication and that suggested a topic for another article: What factor will decide Christianity’s influence upon secular thought in the next ten years? A round table of scholars replied. Editor Carl Henry wrote, “Whenever a culture loses vision of the eternal…it is headed straight for heathenism.” Gordon Clark said, “The sovereignty of God is the only factor that will decide Christianity’s influence on secular thought. Observation gives no grounds for supposing that Christianity will have any noticeable effect in the next decade.” Addison Leitch struck a positive note, remarking, “I am increasingly impressed by the attention being given by the Roman Catholic Church to biblical studies.”

Perhaps the most prescient comment came from William Childs Robinson, a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary: “That factor which is likely to have the most decisive influence in diverting the secular thought of the oncoming generation from Christianity is the removal of prayer from our public schools.”

A charming footnote included in this issue was an item about the newest winner of the Miss America crown, Vonda Kay Van Dyke. Pageant Emcee Bert Parks remarked that Vonda Kay carried a Bible around as a “good luck charm.” Vonda Kay gently replied that the book was not a charm, it was “the most important book I own.” Her awareness of the importance of sharing her faith was hinted at when she talked about her particular talent as a ventriloquist. She often spoke before youth groups and had noticed “they won’t listen to me, but they’ll listen to my dummy.”

Thank God for the continuing witness of the saints, whether by dummies or Christian magazines!