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TODAY’S GUESTS: 

Aimee Welch is a former journalist and an adoptive parent and advocate.

Bob Smietana is a national reporter for RNS based near Chicago, covering evangelicals, weird religion, and the changing religious landscape. Smietana is an award-winning religion reporter and editor who has spent two decades producing breaking news, data journalism, investigative reporting, profiles and features for magazines, newspapers, trade publications, and websites. Most notably, he has served as a senior writer for Facts & Trends, senior editor of Christianity Today, religion writer at The Tennessean, correspondent for RNS and contributor to OnFaith, USA Today, and The Washington Post. 

ABOUT THE BULLETIN:

The Bulletin is a weekly (and sometimes more!) current events show from Christianity Today hosted and moderated by Clarissa Moll, with senior commentary from Russell Moore (Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief) and Mike Cosper (director, CT Media). Each week, the show explores current events and breaking news and shares a Christian perspective on issues that are shaping our world. We also offer special one-on-one conversations with writers, artists, and thought leaders whose impact on the world brings important significance to a Christian worldview, like Bono, Sharon McMahon, Harrison Scott Key, Frank Bruni, and more.

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“The Bulletin” is a production of Christianity Today
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Editing and Mix: TJ Hester
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Executive Producers: Erik Petrik and Mike Cosper
Senior Producer: Matt Stevens

The post Don’t Blame Me appeared first on Christianity Today.

Several hundred American families have been matched with children in China. Many families were scheduled to bring their children home in January 2020, the same month that China closed down due to its zero-COVID policy and have been waiting for over four and a half years to bring their children home.

Aimee Welch was about to travel to China in March 2020 to finalize the adoption of a 6-year-old girl. After an agonizing past few years, Welch reflected on China’s announcement, saying, “It’s a closed door with no closure. And to think about this little girl, we promised to come for her. As a 6-year-old, how could she process the reason why we weren’t coming when we said we could?”

For years, China was “a leading country of origin” for adoptions and had one of the smoothest and most efficient programs. According to state department data between 1999 and 2023, more than 80,000 children from China were adopted into the US.

The landscape of intercountry adoption has changed over the past twenty years, and there’s been a steep decline in the number of such adoptions. In 2004, adoption across foreign borders peaked at 22,988. In 2023, only 1,275 children were welcomed into families through intercountry adoption.

The reasons for the global decline range from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, sending countries halting their programs, and countries and cultures becoming more open to domestic foster care and adoption.

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Why Christians Are Abandoning the Orphanage

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

Another shift is that many of the children available for international adoption are older children and children with moderate to severe medical special needs. The waiting children are some of the most vulnerable, and for many, their only chance to grow up in a safe, loving, permanent home is having the option of intercountry adoption.

China’s announcement is devastating because it means that thousands of children will likely grow up in institutions and won’t have access to families around the world who would be willing to give them loving homes. It remains unclear and unlikely that China will allow the waiting families to finalize their adoptions.

The waiting Chinese children range in age from 5 to 16, and all have moderate medical needs. In addition to being separated from the families pursuing them, most of these children have gone without medical care and educational opportunities.

Christians should care about this announcement because God designed children to flourish in the safety and love of families. Each of these children is made in God’s image, and our hearts should be attuned to the suffering of the vulnerable.

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China Ends International Adoptions, Leaving Hundreds of Cases in Limbo

Diana Chandler – Baptist Press

Adoption is complex because it involves loss and sacrifice for all parties involved—birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees. Even though adoption is intricate, it must remain viable for children around the world who long to be raised in families where they are known and loved, not in impersonal institutions.

Although many orphanages in China seek to care well for children, institutions aren’t able to offer a child the same benefits, love, and safety as a permanent family. Children flourish to their greatest potential when their physical and emotional needs are being met in individualized ways.

Research has shown that the longer children remain in institutions, the more developmentally behind they can fall in comparison to their peers who are not in institutionalized settings. While we have great respect for professionals caring for children, there is no substitute for permanent families. One of the positive shifts over the past few years has been from Christians who understand and support local family-based care and deinstitutionalization.

Beijing’s termination of intercountry adoptions officially began on August 28, one day before US national security advisor Jake Sullivan met with Chinese president Xi Jinping. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and top US government officials should swiftly urge China to allow the waiting families who’ve been matched to complete their adoptions.

It is crucial that our government use all mechanisms available to seek a resolution that allows these families to complete their long-pending adoptions and ensure that the rights and well-being of children remain at the forefront of any diplomatic efforts.

My own life was forever transformed because of international adoption. I’m an adoptee from Romania. My five siblings and a cousin were all adopted internationally from Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. I remember helplessly watching President Vladimir Putin sign a law that prohibited the adoption of Russian children by US citizens beginning in 2013. It struck me that had the timing of my own family’s adoption story been different, my very own Russian siblings might never have joined our family.

My husband and I welcomed our son home through international adoption from India last year. I have the unique vantage point of being both an adoptee and an adoptive mother. My son and I, though our stories are distinct, both know what it’s like to join a family through international adoption.

When we said yes to our son’s file, we gleefully texted friends and family, joyfully showed his picture to anyone who’d pay attention, decorated his room, prayed fervently for him, and achingly counted down the days until we could be with our son.

The same was true for many of the waiting families who’ve held space in their hearts, homes, and lives for the children in China they were pursuing. Their grief and uncertainty of waiting an additional four and a half years only to hear this announcement is truly heartbreaking.

Scripture reminds us that “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord” (Prov. 21:1, ESV). May we boldly ask the Lord to soften the heart of President Xi so that he might allow the waiting children to join their families. May we remember the adoptees from China, families who’ve adopted children from China, the waiting families, and the waiting children.

Christians must be at the forefront of fighting for what is right and just. We should use our voices to advocate for these children to be brought home into the permanency of loving families. Jesus loves the little children of the world, and so should we.

Chelsea Sobolik serves as director of government relations for World Relief and is the former director of public policy for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). She is the author of Called to Cultivate: A Gospel Vision for Women and Work and Longing for Motherhood: Holding on to Hope in the Midst of Childlessness.

The post China’s New Adoption Policy Leaves Children in the Balance appeared first on Christianity Today.

Penelope, as we call her, has no idea that millions of people have heard her story in news reports and that around the world, people are advocating for her and the other 300 Chinese children whose adoptions have been left in limbo to be allowed to join their intended families.

We adopted our first daughter, Grace, from China in 2017 the day after she turned a year old. She left the kind but temporary caregivers of her orphanage and learned the meaning and permanency of family even as she learned to talk and toddle.

Delighted to add a precious daughter to our family of four beloved sons, we made plans to return to China to adopt another child––a waiting older girl who shared Grace’s birth culture and heritage. As a waiting child’s likelihood of finding a permanent home decreases precipitously with each year of age, we specifically wanted to welcome a child whose hope of a home might be running out.

We were officially matched as Penelope’s promised family in September 2019, when she was five years old. In the photos we received, her bright smile—despite her medical needs and long wait for a family—captured our hearts. We chose her English name, Penelope, because of the ancient Greek myth that told of a beautiful woman who faithfully persisted in hope of being united with her beloved. It seemed providential when we learned that the Chinese name given to her by her orphanage meant “morning light”—especially light that comes after a long night of waiting.

We completed the remainder of Penelope’s adoption process as quickly as we could, and it was approved bythe governments ofboth China and the US. When she turned six, we believed it was the last birthday she would celebrate without us. By January 2020, we had entered the final stages of the adoption process. She was told we would soon become her family and bring her home to the United States.

But then the pandemic struck. China paused adoption processing, making assurances that matches would be honored when health concerns resolved. Instead of welcoming Penelope into our arms the weekend we should have finalized her adoption, we met her virtually on a video call. Her caregiver who served as our translator said, “She has never had a mother or father before.” Although shy, she didn’t hesitate to call us “Mommy and Daddy.” Our bond grew through packages, letters, photos, and videos exchanged.

Yet more than four years later, we find ourselves still waiting to be united, uncertain whether the promise of family made to Penelope will be honored.    

In September 2024, the US Department of State shared China’s decision to end its successful inter-country adoption program, leaving Penelope and roughly 300 other children who had already been matched with US families in limbo for years, perhaps never to experience the loving homes they were promised.

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China’s New Adoption Policy Leaves Children in the Balance

Chelsea Sobolik

The news is dire because 98 percent of the more than 160,000 children in China living outside of a family’s care—a roughly equal mix of boys and girls—have complex medical needs, making them unlikely candidates for domestic adoption.

International adoption was determined to be in Grace’s best interests because she was born without her left hand and forearm. While disability is stigmatized in some cultures, she thrives in our family and is celebrated for her difference and adaptability in the US.

Penelope has a serious but manageable lifelong condition; if she receives good medical treatment and the emotional care a family can provide, we’re confident she’ll flourish as Grace has. The other children whose adoptions are pending live with spina bifida, Down syndrome, genetic disorders, spinal muscular atrophy, cardiac abnormalities, blindness, or other conditions, many of which have only become more pressing as their promised adoptions have been delayed.

More than the sum of symptoms listed in their files though, these children are precious individuals created in the image of God, of infinite worth, perfectly designed (Ps. 139:14–18). Whatever their physical needs, their great and universal need is for the love of families. Their prospective families recognize the privilege it would be to welcome them as sons and daughters.

As Ryan Hanlon, president and CEO of the National Council For Adoption, said, no one questions Beijing’s right to discontinue international adoptions going forward, but the children whose adoptions were already in process should be accommodated: “The adoptions that were happening to the U.S. were older children and children with medical special needs.”

If these children were being placed in caring, permanent families in China, that would be something we could celebrate. But both the US and China determined that, for these children, international adoption was and is their best chance for permanent families.

Beijing should reassure children like our Penelope, who had already been matched with families, that their adoptions will be finalized—rather than leaving them to languish in institutions and, at best, launch into adulthood without adequate support.

In a recent statement, President Xi Jinping pointed out that the China-US relationship is “one of the most important bilateral relations in the world” and expressed a commitment to pursue “win-win cooperation,” working “with the United States as partners and friends, which will not only benefit the two countries but also the world at large.”

Completing the nearly 300 pending adoptions between China and the US is a prime opportunity to achieve these goals. As one of the largest and most successful adoption programs in the world, the China-US adoption partnership thrived for decades as a bridge of friendship and humanitarian cooperation, placing 82,000 children in grateful American families and creating a person-to-person bond of goodwill between our nations.

This is why, earlier this month, 103 members of Congress sent a letter to President Biden in a rare act of bipartisan and bicameral unity, asking him to personally “act in the best interest of these children and families by urging the PRC to fulfill and uphold the commitment the country has made.”

While governments struggle to adequately support vulnerable children, adoption helps them flourish. Adoption can make a world of difference for one vulnerable child at a time. As part of Penelope’s adoption process, we promised to provide lifelong love, care, and support, and we have never given up hope that we might be allowed to keep that promise. The pain of another family lost isn’t what the children in adoption limbo deserve. Nor is it a fitting end to three decades of humanitarian cooperation between the US and China to secure homes for tens of thousands of children.

As parents, we follow the example of the shepherd who left the 99 to seek the one who was lost, believing that adoption can be a partial, if imperfect, answer to the brokenness that leaves children in need of families. We believe these particular children, whom we have loved and prayed for from a world away, were woven into our stories for a purpose.               

Waiting children officially matched with carefully vetted and approved adoptive families shouldn’t spend birthday after birthday in institutions. This World Adoption Day, on our sweet Penelope’s birthday, China should honor the promises made to these children and make a way for them to come home.

Aimee Welch is a former journalist and an adoptive parent. The founder of Hope Leads Home, she has been a leading parent advocate for completing China adoptions since 2020.

The post Beijing, Let My Daughter Come Home appeared first on Christianity Today.

Many shouted, others wept with a loud voice,” wrote Maria Woodworth-Etter about one of her meetings. “Other times the power would sweep over the house in melting power. In a few minutes, everyone in the congregation would be weeping, saints and sinners.” But Woodworth-Etter’s meeting occurred years before the Pentecostal movement began.

At these meetings, congregants would fall into trances or experience visions that could last for hours. Woodworth-Etter often went into trances, too, standing perfectly still with her hands in the air while the service continued. She called the experience “the power,” but critics dubbed her the “voodoo priestess.”

A frequent charge was that she hypnotized the people. Two doctors in St. Louis tried to have her committed as insane during a meeting she conducted there in 1890.

Born near Lisbon, Ohio, she had a rough first 35 years—five of her six children had died, and her first husband was caught in adultery. Distraught, she turned to the Quakers and became a preacher at a revival meeting. In 1912, at age 68, Woodworth-Etter joined the larger Pentecostal movement when she accepted Pentecostal pioneer F. F. Bosworth’s invitation to speak at his Dallas church. She stayed for six months, gaining favorable publicity in Pentecostal publications as far away as England.

Woodworth-Etter became one of the best known Pentecostal evangelists at the turn of the century, and her ministry made it more possible for later woman preachers and healers, like Aimee Semple McPherson and Kathryn Kuhlman, to minister publicly.

Charles H. Mason (1866-1961)

Charles Mason grew up hearing about the passionate Christianity of the slaves from his parents, both of whom had only recently been freed when Charles was born. He was enthralled even as a child, and constantly prayed, said one family member, “above all things [for] a religion like the one he had heard about from the old slaves and seen demonstrated in their lives.”

At age 14, one year after his father died of the plague in an Arkansas swamp shack, Mason lay dying of tuberculosis. But on a Sunday morning, his wife recounted in his biography, he “got out of bed and walked outside all by himself. There, under the morning skies, he prayed and praised God for his healing, [and he] renewed his commitment to God.”

In 1891 Charles was ordained as a Baptist minister. But before he began preaching, he married Alice Saxton, who was so opposed to his plans for preaching that she divorced him two years later. About that same time, Mason struggled with the increasingly liberal Arkansas Baptist College, and dropped out. “I packed my books, arose, and bade them a final farewell to follow Jesus, with the Bible as my sacred guide,” he later recounted.

Increasingly interested in Holiness “second blessing” teachings, he joined with Charles P. Jones to form the “Church of God in Christ” (COGIC)—a name he said God gave him while walking down a street in Little Rock, Arkansas. A decade later Mason felt “a wave of glory” while visiting the Azusa Street Revival and began to speak in tongues. When he returned to Memphis to share his experience, Jones expelled him. But Jones took a large portion of cogic members and, after a lengthy legal battle, the name of the denomination.

Though the COGIC at one time had as many white ministers as black—it was the only Pentecostal church in America authorized by the government to ordain ministers—Mason continued to seek the “spiritual essence” and “prayer tradition” of the slave religious experience. In 1913, the white cogic ministers broke off to form the Assemblies of God (AG), but Mason continued to work on both sides of the racial divide, speaking at AG conferences and meetings. “The church is like the eye,” he often said. “It has a little black in it and a little white in it, and without both it can’t see.”

Today the COGIC has almost 7 million members in the U.S.—more than twice that of the AG.

Gaston Barnabas Cashwell (1862-1916)

Southern apostle of Pentecost

When the Pentecostal Holiness Church (PHC) met for its annual conference in Lumberton, North Carolina, in November 1906, one of its most prominent members, G. B. Cashwell, was absent. But he had left a letter: “I realize that my life has fallen short of the standard of holiness we preach; but I have repented in my home in Dunn, North Carolina, and I have been restored. I am unable to be with you at this time, for I am now leaving for Los Angeles, California, where I shall seek for the baptism of the Holy Ghost.”

But when the blond, middle-aged, 250-pound Holiness preacher from North Carolina arrived at the Azusa Street Revival, he was very uncomfortable. He found many of the practices “fanatical,” and when a young black man laid hands on him for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, he was repulsed. But he soon “suffered a crucifixion” and “died” to his prejudice. He returned to the church and asked the black leaders to lay hands on him and pray. Immediately, he began to speak in tongues.

Cashwell returned to Dunn the next month, and began preaching to his fellow Holiness believers about Spirit baptism and speaking in tongues. Though his superior in the phc opposed his teachings, Cashwell continued to preach across the region. He soon became known as “the apostle of Pentecost in the South.”

Only two years later, however, Cashwell left the phc, apparently frustrated after not being elected its president. But in that time, he had brought four major Holiness denominations—the phc, the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), and the Pentecostal Free-Will Baptist Church—into the Pentecostal movement.

Ambrose Jessup (A.J.) Tomlinson (1865-1943)

Church of God visionary

Unsatisfied with his mystical Quaker heritage, traveling Bible salesman A. J. Tomlinson joined a church called “The Church of the Living God for the Evangelization of the World, Gathering of Israel, New Order of Things at the Close of the Gentile Age.” After another few years of close contact with Holiness believers, the Indiana-born Tomlinson had a vision:

“Jesus had started the Church of God when he was here on earth, and a record was kept of its progress and activities for several years after the death of its founder. The period known as the Dark Ages had come after the Church of God had departed from the faith and the church was lost to view.”

Understanding it to be the only “True Church of God,” in 1903 Tomlinson became the leader of a small band of Holiness believers in Camp Creek, Tennessee, known as the Church of God (though it had recently changed its name to the Holiness Church). By 1909 he was its general overseer.

Tomlinson began teaching Pentecostal doctrines as early as January 1907, but truly brought the denomination into the Pentecostal movement after speaking in tongues at a G. B. Cashwell revival meeting in 1908.

Though he was made “permanent general overseer” in 1914, he was removed from the denomination in 1922. Taking 2,000 members with him, he formed the Tomlinson Church of God, later renamed the Church of God of Prophecy.

Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine. Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

The post The Rise of Pentecostalism: A Gallery – Setting the Vision appeared first on Christianity Today.

The Heart Of Christian Ethics

Theological Ethics, Volume I: Foundations, by Helmut Thielicke, edited by William H. Lazareth (Fortress, 1966, 697 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Ellis W. Hollon, Jr., associate professor of philosophy, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

In this book, Helmut Thielicke, professor of theology at the University of Hamburg, does three valuable things:

First, he makes justification central to ethics. Thielicke will not acquiesce to Barth’s conclusion that the Law is only the form of the Gospel, whose content is grace. This shatters the key position of justification, that miracle of God which must be placed at the heart of any Christian ethics. Thielicke makes the radical distinction between Law and Gospel the criterion by which to test the legitimacy of a theology, since only such a strict distinction can maintain the historicity of revelation: “The monistic teaching in Barth’s theology … finds expression in his obliteration of the antithesis between Law and Gospel, leads to timelessness, the elimination of salvation history, and hence a philosophical world view.”

Thielicke sees as his own task the “declining” of “the doctrine of justification through all the case forms in which it appears within the grammar of our existence.” He says that his basic concern is “to formulate an evangelical ethic for which the fact of justification is decisive.” This means that evangelical ethics is completely different from all philosophical ethics: “Evangelical ethics … takes as its starting point not the goal but the presupposition of the ethical act. It proceeds from the fact of justification as accomplished and given.…”

This “gift,” justification, makes us Christians; yet we are also, in sanctification, called upon to produce good fruits. How can this seeming contradiction between the indicative and the imperative be resolved? Thielicke says:

The automatism of works must be seen in relation to an act which needs constantly to be repeated, namely, that personal … act of decision in virtue of which I turn either to the flesh or to the Spirit, in order to receive the orientation of my existence from either the flesh or the Spirit.

Thielicke feels that this close interrelation of person and work touches on the basic concern of an evangelical ethics grounded in justification and that it “marks the decisive boundary which separates evangelical ethics from all philosophical ethics.”

Second, Thielicke establishes a challenging dialogue with Roman Catholicism. This is done primarily in connection with the imago Dei doctrine. He believes that Roman Catholicism’s interpretation of the “image of God” is ontological rather than personal, since it holds that the imago corresponds to the natural endowment of man (“free reason”), and since it separates this “neutral” thing from the similitudo, the “likeness,” which depends on man’s voluntarily seizing and actualizing his final destiny. This means that “man is capable of co-operating in the work of salvation.”

But Thielicke will have none of this. To think personalistically instead of ontologically “is to see all the realities of human life exclusively in terms of the personal relatedness of God and man, or more precisely, in terms of the fellowship between man and God given in Christ.” The imago Dei is neither an immanent quality nor the relic of such a quality; rather, “the command of God the creator and the corresponding obedience of man his creature together describe the fellowship with God which we call the divine likeness.” After the Fall, this image is “really present,” but only in the “negative mode which implies negation of the original fellowship with God.…” Since it is rather a “relation to God” than an ontic quality, “it can attain to the positive mode only in the one who is ‘our peace,’ i.e., the prototype of our unfallen position: only ‘in Christ.’ ”

Third, Thielicke offers illuminating “models” of Christian behavior. The two “situational” models he examines are “compromise” and the “borderline situation,” with the models of compromise perhaps being more important. “Compromise” involves especially the problem of the white lie.

“White lies” can arise either in an unjust situation or in a situation of agreement. In the former, such as in the interrogation procedures of a totalitarian state, the “enemy” has lost all claim to truth; thus, a “compromise” cannot in that case be called “unchristian,” because there “it is possible that an individual or a group has forfeited its claim to truth.”

In the latter situation is found the problem of the truthfulness of a physician in dealing with a person having a fatal illness. Thielicke holds that the patient must be gradually led to realize that he, himself, as a person is to die, so that he is not dehumanized at the end of his life. Yet this kind of procedure only once again reveals that the physician himself, like his patient, is a fallen man living in a fallen world: “In the depths of every human situation we discover evidence of the fact that our world is a fallen world still awaiting its redemption.”

By way of criticism, I would point out that Thielicke’s outspoken opposition to any philosophical Weltanschauung does not prevent him from using philosophical perspectives himself if the occasion seems to demand them. For instance, he says that “the specifically ‘Christian’ element in ethics is … to be sought explicitly and exclusively in the motivation of the action,” but surely this is not incompatible with the Kantian insight concerning the Categorical Imperative.

The attempt to seek a “philosophical principle” is not in itself necessarily unevangelical. The very fact that the two parts of the Bible are called “testaments” signifies that they “testify” to something that demands meditative reflection to be fully understood. Thielicke says that any philosophical principle will always, for the evangelical thinker, have at hand “a corrective drawn from the history of salvation”; but I would suggest that this very process of inference (“drawing from”) involves the use of philosophical principles—such as the principle that “the nature of a thing is always to be ‘defined’ in terms of its telos or goal.”

Thielicke is also guilty of some inconsistency in theological language. He says in one place that, contra Brunner, “there is no such thing as a capacity for hearing that corresponds to the fact that man is addressed.” Yet in a later passage he declares that “even in the negative mode man still remains responsible.” Does not the word “responsible” connote “an ability to respond,” as Brunner maintains? Thielicke himself later admits that “surely Emil Brunner must ultimately be right in some way in his unwearying insistence that the Gospel does not address itself to sticks and stones, to oxen and asses, but to men.”

These two criticisms do not invalidate the valuable contributions made by this book. May I suggest that Thielicke’s three important achievements in the realm of theological ethics make this book a must for every minister as well as a viable option for teachers interested in the problems of ethics?

Don’T Underestimate The Ancients

Archaeology and Our Old Testament Contemporaries, by James L. Kelso (Zondervan, 1966, 192 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Earl S. Kalland, professor of Old Testament, Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

In an age egotistically proud of its scientific gadgetry, this little work ought to jolt one into a better view of man as he really is. The author’s claim that “to underestimate the God of the Old Testament” and “to underestimate its finest people” are “two common mistakes in Old Testament interpretation today” gets ample support in his fourteen short chapters. Although Kelso doesn’t say so, overestimation of the brilliance and ability of twentieth-century man produces this underestimation of ancient man. Any correction of our failure to give proper value to the character and abilities of ancient man will prove salutary.

Kelso’s fetching chapter titles overpopularize his main theme of the contemporaneity of the Old Testament people. His thesis is nonetheless correct. Of course, the Israelite judges were not exactly like the leaders of today’s new nations, nor did Solomon acquire even one Ph.D. Yet these analogies (and a dozen others) have a basic truthfulness and show the relevance of the Old Testament to our times.

Kelso’s simple and lucid style should make the book attractive to the average Christian reader. Yet the work is no less authoritative because it is easy to read. The wealth of Kelso’s knowledge of archaeology is evident as he describes the persons and times of famous Old Testament leaders from Abraham’s day to the inter-testamental period. The lessons taught are well worth learning.

The book is evangelically biblical. It warms the heart of one whose high view of Scripture is coupled with a fondness for its truth. Not bibliolatry but a biblically centered faith in the God of the Bible as the true God is evidenced on every page. Though not a book of doctrine, it nevertheless imparts evangelical doctrine.

This informative volume should be in the library of every Christian teacher and minister.

Pentecostal Panorama

Pentecostalism, by John Thomas Nichol (Harper & Row, 1966, 264 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by John E. Dahlin, professor emeritus of history and political science, Northwestern College, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This is a major contribution in the treatment of the history of the Pentecostal movement from its origin at the turn of the century to the present. To write such a history is no small task, for this movement has expanded into nearly all areas of the earth. The volume shows comprehensive research, and the documentation is excellent.

Nichol brings forward many important personalities of the movement. One is Charles Fox Parham, the leader of the “Full Gospel” emphasis in the United States at the beginning period. Parham strongly advocated healing, baptism with the Holy Spirit, and speaking in tongues, three points of doctrine that have been emphasized throughout the history of Pentecostalism. Then there are certain unusual personalities in American Pentecostalism, including Aimee Semple McPherson, Tommy Hicks, and Oral Roberts. Nichol also considers prominent Pentecostal leaders in many other lands, such as Lewi Petrus of Sweden and T. A. Barratt of Norway. The reader is impressed by the magnitude of the Pentecostal movement.

The author’s Pentecostal background does not color his work; he is sympathetic but not biased. The book was written, he says, not to defend Pentecostalism, but to provide a comprehensive history of it. He has avoided controversy by omitting a theological interpretation of Pentecostalism. Such an interpretation, or a serious evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, would have been welcome.

Nichol designates Pentecostalism as a “third force” in Christianity. This seems unwarranted, since the movement has, according to him, not more than 8,000,000 adherents. Moreover, there has been continuous fragmentation during its history, as Nichol admits.

To cover the entire history of Pentecostalism in one medium-sized volume is impossible. Some of Nichol’s discussions are meager. Yet his work will be exceedingly useful as a competent and objective survey of this important movement within Protestantism.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• Ancient Orient and Old Testament, by K. A. Kitchen (Inter-Varsity, $3.95). A British scholar applies ancient Near East data to problems of Old Testament chronology, history, and literary criticism and calls for a critical reassessment of widely held liberal theories and methods.

• Valiant for the Truth: A Treasury of Evangelical Writings, compiled and edited by David Otis Fuller (Lippincott, $5.95). Stirring selections by thirty-three great Christian leaders from the first to the twentieth centuries; excellent biographical sketches written by Henry Coray.

• Religion: Origins and Ideas, by Robert Brow (Inter-Varsity, $3.50). Religion in the life of man: original monotheism, development and degeneration of priestcraft, revealed Christianity compared with other religions.

Meet The Great Ones

How I Changed My Mind, by Karl Barth, edited by John D. Godsey (John Knox, 1966, 96 pp., $3) and I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reminiscences of His Friends, edited by Wolf-Dieter Zimmerman (Harper & Row, 1967, 238 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, professor of church history and historical theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

These two small and attractive works merit attention, not for any great contribution they make to theology or church life, but for the insight they offer into two notable figures of our age.

The Barth book has as its core the three essays on the theme “How I Changed My Mind” that Barth wrote for the Christian Century. These refer to the decades 1928–1938, 1938–1948, and 1948–1958. To them the editor has added an introduction on Barth up to 1928, an appendix on his life after 1958, an epilogue on a recent visit to Barth, and some photographs of Barth at various ages from twenty-three to seventy-nine. A useful biography is given also.

The essays should not mislead us, for they are mostly about matters other than theological. Perhaps the most illuminating points are the reference to the final abandonment of a philosophical basis and method and the depiction of Bultmann’s theology as a “resumption of the theme and method of the type of theology fostered by Schleiermacher.” Barth also attempts an apologia of his attitude toward East-West relations.

The work as a whole is clearly not of any serious importance. Nevertheless, those who want a readable, almost chatty introduction to Barth, with some insights into the man as well as the teaching, will welcome this book.

Although it was composed in a different way, the book about Bonhoeffer accomplishes something of the same end. It contains, not material by Bonhoeffer himself, but information and impressions contributed by a whole group ranging from his twin sister Sabine to men like Reinhold Niebuhr and Bishop G. Bell. These impressions are arranged chronologically so as to give us portraits of Bonhoeffer from his childhood to his imprisonment and execution. The essays vary greatly in size, nature, and content, according to the length and depth of acquaintance. All reflect in some degree the greatness of the man, though the ones that verge on hagiography are the least helpful.

In view of the way Bonhoeffer is often portrayed today, the combination of deep and simple piety with his theological endowment and activity is particularly worth noting. So, too, is his serenity through all the trials and adversities of the Hitler period. The book also gives us many sayings that acquire an added dimension in the light of Bonhoeffer’s destiny. Whether or not one wishes to follow Bonhoeffer in his theology, or even in the political decisions that led to his death, the stature of his by no means religionless Christianity comes out strongly in this well-arranged and very readable collection.

Operation Ignition

The Incendiary Fellowship, by D. Elton Trueblood (Harper & Row, 1967, 121 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Ilion T. Jones, professor emeritus of practical theology, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California.

This latest of Dr. Trueblood’s many books reaches the level of the others in quality, value, and relevance. The “fellowship” is the Christian Church. The adjective is suggested by a number of New Testament passages that contain the word “fire,” especially these two: “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49); and, “There appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them” (Acts 2:3).

The contents of the book may be summarized as follows:

The early Church was “created” by the fire that was kindled by Christ’s public ministry, his death and resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the evangelistic and missionary zeal of the early Christians. These Christians were “on fire” with a faith to which they were wholly committed. That faith was not a “vague religiosity”; it survived largely because it was specific and definite. “They believed that God really is, that He is wholly personal, that He is like Christ, that He has a particular interest in each individual of the human race, that Christ was telling the truth when he said ‘No one can come to the Father but by me,’ and that God’s purpose involves moral distinctions.”

Our world today desperately needs that kind of redemptive fellowship centered in Jesus Christ as the antidote to the evils of civilization and as the solution to its problems. To be effective, perhaps even to survive, the Church must be renewed by the same faith, the same zeal, that characterized the New Testament fellowship.

How can this renewal be accomplished? The conditions are costly. Renewal “cannot be brought about either by a new set of gadgets or by the rearrangement of the lives of uncommitted people.” The Church must have a definite faith in God as a reality, as a Person, as a living Spirit in the hearts of men. “There is no possibility of renewal unless we are always living on the spiritual frontier.” A new order will not be established by social engineering per se; rather, it will be established by changed men who recognize the “intrinsic necessity of Christian evangelism,” who are willing to be regarded as “quiet fanatics,” but who also realize that all their efforts must be “rational” and that they must be “disciplined followers and disciplined minds.” Hence they must be continuously engaged in “hard thinking”; they must devise new ways of putting their faith to work in every profession and in every area of the world, new ways of preparing laymen to become ministers, scholars, and evangelists for these purposes. In short, the Church “is intended to be an incendiary fellowship and nothing else.” It must be always engaged in “Operation Ignition.”

This, then, is Dr. Trueblood’s message in this book. Anyone who concludes that he is seeking to make the modern Church a mere duplicate of the New Testament Church misunderstands this message. What he is saying, rather, is that a modern Church that is dominated by the faith, equipped with the spiritual resources, and fired with the zeal of the New Testament fellowship can and ought to be a creative, constructive force in our day. Dr. Trueblood suggests a number of significant changes essential to these ends and challenges church leaders to outthink the philosophers, scientists, sociologists, and social engineers of the day.

Rightly understood, this book is directed, not to either liberals or conservatives, but to all who call themselves evangelicals. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” through this modern prophet of God.

What Does It Mean?

Meaningful Nonsense, by Charles J. Ping (Westminster, 1966, 143 pp., $2.25), and Language, Hermeneutic and Word of God, by Robert W. Funk (Harper & Row, 1966, 317 pp., $7.50), are reviewed by Lawrence E. Yates, professor of philosophy and Greek, Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington.

Both these books deal with the language of faith. In Meaningful Nonsense, Ping convincingly demonstrates that when words are given to faith, they are meaningful. He begins by a via negativa, showing that the philosophical method of linguistic analysis indicates that the facts of faith are unverifiable and therefore meaningless. Even though rationally nonsensical, however, this nonsense is meaningful, because it is the expression in faith of an encounter with a response to a living God. Therefore, the mode of expression must necessarily be always symbols and analogies.

Can the language of encounter be verified? Assuredly, says the author, not in static experiment but in the dynamic experience of the one who has been overcome by God’s love revealed in a historic person, Jesus of Nazareth.

This book is thoughtfully written and will well repay a careful reading. It is not a theological treatise. The style is engaging and non-technical.

In contrast, Language, Hermeneutic and Word of God is a technical work. James M. Robinson on the dust jacket describes it as “the beginning of a new kind of theology in America.”

The Barthian methodology, says the author, sees the biblical text as human language and hence culturally conditioned. As interpretation of God’s word, it points beyond itself to the divine word, which, because divine, is beyond the reach of the interpreter; that is, the Word is within the word. Ernst Fuchs and Gerhard Ebeling, Continental theologians who are former students of Bultmann, reverse the direction. By focusing the salvation event in language itself, they see the text as divine language wherein Jesus Christ interprets man, who in faith responds in terms of confession. In thus stressing the historical Jesus they differ from Bultmann.

Professor Funk, who follows Fuchs and Ebeling, applies this method to the parables. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, “language event” is the wordless action of the Samaritan who acts in love. Thus the language event “which grounds the Samaritan’s action precedes the language event which the parable may become for its hearers.” Hence the parable interprets man.

Funk further examines Paul’s discussion of sophia (wisdom) in First Corinthians. Christ as sophia has been partially or totally eclipsed in and by the language of the Corinthians, who see sophia as “free floating speculation.” Paul uses their language but from his personal experience of the living Christ as language event “seeks to shatter the word determined by sophia on the word of the cross” (the true sophia), as Jesus in the parable strove to shatter the whole legal tradition on himself as the Word.

This new approach is highly commendable. The positive proclamation of the living God is sorely needed today, for the question is, as Funk observes, “whether the words spoken from the pulpit and in the counseling chamber carry with them the reality of God’s redeeming grace.” If this new hermeneutic can help to achieve this end it will be most welcome. Specialists will particularly appreciate the grasp and discussion of the positions of Van Buren, Ott, Ogden, and Bultmann.

Does It Merit A Prize?

Believing and Knowing, by Emerson Shideler (Iowa State University, 1966, 196 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Charles C. Ryrie, dean of the Graduate School, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

Although this was a prize-winning book (“most significant new book by an Iowa author in 1965”), it will not be a winner to many evangelicals. Its subject matter and many of its insights do make it a significant work, but its conclusions leave something to be desired for anyone who looks to the written Word for authority.

Essentially, this book is another attempt to deal with the apparent struggle between religion and science. The author, who teaches philosophy and religion at Iowa State, flatly rejects the idea that liberalism’s accommodation to science has provided the answer. His reason is simple: The resurgence of biblical theology has put to flight the old liberalism and reopened the question. By “biblical theology” the author does not mean Bultmannian demythologizing or fundamentalist identification of the words of the Bible as the words of God, but rather the view of a personal revelation of God that demands response from man but is not dependent on an accurate, non-mythological Bible.

Working from this conception of biblical theology, Professor Shideler goes on to delineate the areas of religious and scientific knowledge. He says that the religious question (“Who?”) is answered by a meeting of persons (God and man), while the scientific question (“What?”) is answered in neutral terms identical for all persons. The religious answer of personal encounter is not without its objectifying elements, however, the firmest being the resurrection of Christ. Yet it does not necessitate propositional revelation. Here, of course, is where the evangelical will disagree with the author. On the other hand. Shideler says that the scientific answer, though usually considered to be wholly objective, also involves subjective interaction with other scientists and with the purpose of the investigation. Thus religion and science do not operate within mutually exclusive frameworks. The limitations the author places on science are well reasoned and worthy of careful reading. But the limitations he places on religion are directly related to his unsatisfactory view of the Bible.

The conclusion is that man must look at religion and science at the same time and learn from both. This is fine—except for the important fact that the view of religion the author points us to is not entirely biblical. Herein is the key to solving the problem this book raises. Divorce biblical theology from the highest view of Scripture, as Shideler does, and one has to conclude that man must live in this dialectic tension. But let the Scripture reveal both personal and propositional truth and stand as judge of all truth, from whatever source, and the ambiguity of the human situation (which is all this author can leave his reader with) disappears.

Book Briefs

Everyone in the Bible, by William P. Barker (Revell, 1966, 370 pp., $6.95). Ever wonder who Abagtha, Nekoda, and Zizah were? You will meet them along with 3,000 others in this complete biblical Who’s Who.

You Shall Be as Gods, by Erich Fromm (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966, 240 pp., $4.95). A radical interpretation of the Old Testament by a psychoanalyst who believes that the concept “God” is one of many poetic expressions of the highest value in humanism.

The Creative Edge of American Protestantism, by Earl H. Brill (Seabury, 1966, 248 pp., $5.95). A competent history of Protestant activism and an uneven discussion of several social issues, with trenchant material on Christian education and refreshingly balanced comments on our nation’s racial sins. By the Episcopal chaplain at American University.

The Cross in the Marketplace, by Foy Valentine (Word, 1966, 122 pp., $3.50). To an age that has “limited vision of poverty but unlimited poverty of vision,” Valentine offers Christian insights on the race question, the Communist threat, the new morality, and Christian social action.

The Church in the Thought of Bishop John Robinson, by Richard P. McBrien (Westminster, 1966, 160 pp., $3.95). A Roman Catholic scholar admits that J. A. T. Robinson is neither a professional theologian nor a systematiic ecclesiologist, then proceeds to answer a question no one has asked.

The Early Christian Doctrine of God, by Robert M. Grant (University Press of Virginia, 1966, 141 pp., $3.50). From the perspective of contemporary theology, Grant attempts to trace the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. He denies that such a trinitarian doctrine as that found in Athenagoras’ writings “always existed in the Christian subconscious.”

The New Smith’s Bible Dictionary, edited by Reuel G. Lemmons (Doubleday, 1966, 441 pp., $4.95). The first revision in twenty-five years of a well-known treasury of biblical information.

Man’s Search for Himself: Modern and Biblical Images, by Leo Scheffczyk (Sheed and Ward, 1966, 176 pp., $3.95). An intriguing discussion of the image of man seen in the Old and New Testaments and modern philosophy and literature. Scheffczyk writes, “the God-man proves to be the open sesame which opens for us the door to man.…”

The New Americanism and Other Speeches and Essays, by Robert Welch (Western Islands, 1966, 209 pp., $4.95). A collection of the major speeches and essays of the founder of the John Birch Society, all pointing to “less government, more responsibility, and a better world.”

Presbyterians and the Negro—A History, by Andrew E. Murray (Presbyterian Historical Society, 1966, 270 pp., $6). A candid discussion of American Presbyterians’ poor record in penetrating the Negro community during the past two hundred years.

Kierkegaard: An Introduction, by Hermann Diem, translated by David Green (John Knox, 1966, 124 pp., $3.50). A Tübingen professor presents a theological introduction to the great Dane and explains his influence.

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, by Thomas Merton (Doubleday, 1966, 328 pp., $4.95). A prolific monastic takes us on a tour of his personal reflections and meditations during the 1960s.

The Christian Funeral: Its Meaning, Its Purpose, and Its Modern Practice, by Edgar N. Jackson (Channel, 1966, 184 pp., $3.95). The Christian funeral is seen as an opportunity for worshiping God, meeting human needs, and affirming the faith. Includes twenty sample meditations.

Vatican II: An Interfaith Appraisal, edited by John H. Miller, C. S. C. (Association and University of Notre Dame, 1966, 656 pp., $12.50). Key participants in Vatican Council II relate the happenings and meaning of the historic conference.

The Rise of Moralism: The Gospel from Hooker to Baxter, by C. F. Allison (Seabury, 1966, 250 pp., $9). Allison argues that seventeenth-century moralistic theology corrupted Anglican orthodoxy and led to eighteenth-century deism and present-day secularism.

Voluntary Associations: A Study of Groups in Free Societies, edited by D. B. Robertson (John Knox, 1966, 448 pp., $9.75). Essays in honor of James Luther Adams that probe the theory and practice of voluntary associations, particularly religious groups.

Teaching about Sex—a Christian Approach, by John C. Howell (Broadman, 1966, 149 pp., $3.95). Discussing sex from an informed Christian perspective, Howell encourages participation by the church in sex education. Recommended.

Studies in Isaiah, by F. C. Jennings (Loizeaux, 1966, 784 pp., $5.95). A conservative commentary on Isaiah originally published in Our Hope a generaration ago.

Events and Their Afterlife, by A. C. Charity (Cambridge, 1966, 288 pp., $9.50). A Bultmannian approach to typology in the Bible and Dante’s Divine Comedy.

The Old Lighthouse, by James R. Adair (Moody, 1966, 157 pp. $2.95). An editor of Scripture Press relates the remarkable skid-row ministry of Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission.

The Minister’s Manual (Doran’s), 1967 Edition, compiled and edited by M. K. W. Heicher (Harper & Row, 1966, 372 pp., $3.95).

The Douglass Sunday School Lessons, 1967, edited by Earl L. Douglass, assisted by Gordon L. Roberts (Macmillan, 1966, 386 pp., $3.95).

Which Way to Lutheran Unity?: A History of Efforts to Unite the Lutherans of America, by John H. Tietjen (Concordia, 1966, 176 pp., $4.95). A review of attempts at Lutheran union from colonial days to the present. An appeal for full fellowship among Lutherans today.

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