DESTINY OR DISEASE?

By Logan Fox

Table of Contents

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LOGAN Fox bears a distinguished name in the Churcb of Christ. Born in Tokyo in 1922 of American missionary parents, He has attended David Lipscomb high school and college and holds a B.A. from George Pepperdine (1946). He has taught at Pepperdine (1947-48, 1960-63) and at lbaraki Christian College, a Church of Christ-sponsored school in Japan (1948-60). He has served Churches of Christ as a minister in Aldan, Pa.; in Harvey and Chicago, Ill.; and in San Fernando, and Los Angeles, Calif. His wife and five children are presently members with him of the Vermont Avenue Church of Christ in Los Angeles.

Mr. Fox was further educated at the University of Chicago (M.A., 1947) and at the University of Southern California, where he was admitted to doctoral candidacy in 1963. He holds an honorary LL.D. from Pepperdine (1959). He has written and edited a number of books, all in Japanese. Currently he is a certified psychologist in California, in private practice since 1962.
 

DESTINY OR DISEASE?

By Logan J. Fox

If the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates declared, it is probably equally true that no unexamined religious movement is of any worth. Be that as it may, for twenty-three years now (ever since my first year in college) I have been impelled to seek to know myself -- as a man, as an American, as a Christian, and as a member of the Church of Christ.

Self-knowledge is never easy, but in my experience nothing has been more difficult than the effort to understand my relationship to the religious fellowship in which I was born and reared.

If this were my problem alone, there would be no point in writing about it. But I have seen and talked with scores of others entangled in this same web; I think there must be hundreds of thousands in our fellowship who share this frustration. Perhaps our problem is not unique to this fellowship and something of the same sort is being faced by countless numbers in all of the "restorationist" Christian groups.

Some of our people in the Church of Christ have left it to become members of freer fellowships. Far larger numbers have lost all interest in active church life, being unable to give themselves to the partisan positions typical of so many of our churches but unable to find relief by identifying with any other groups. Even more Church of Christ people are merely marking time, I believe, while they hope vaguely that "things are getting better," although they have no clear idea what this "getting better" does or should entail.

For myself, it seems that the freeing of my energies for other constructive tasks is tied to the solution of this problem. My religious heritage has at times

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seemed to me almost a messianic destiny, and at other times a dread disease. I am coming to feel that it need be neither. As I trace some of the steps I have taken, I shall at the same time describe the Church of Christ I know.

This picture will, of necessity, be very personal. I hope that the people I describe will feel I have been fair to them. They are the only Church of Christ I have known, and I have felt that this personal account might prove more helpful than one more abstract. In thinking back over my experiences I find them dividing into five periods: (1) age of innocence, 1-13 years; (2) sectarian zeal, 14-18 years; (3) the walls crumble, 19-25 years; (4) missionary activity and church politics, 26-40 years; (5) a layman, 41-.
 

AGE OF INNOCENCE

I discovered myself as a Christian in the home of my parents, missionaries in Japan. We were the only Christians in that part of Japan; everyone else was a "godless heathen" whom we were there to save. Summers we spent at a mountain retreat to which missionaries from all over Japan joyfully went to avoid humid heat and even more oppressive loneliness. We children attended a Union Sunday School and our parents often worshipped with the Union Church. I never wondered what kind of Christian anyone was. It didn't seem to matter.

Being born and reared in the church has had two very important consequences for me. The first is that in a real sense I have been a Christian from the day of my birth. In our brotherhood we teach that people are added to the church only by hearing the gospel, believing it, repenting of sins, and being immersed in water. But while I was not baptized until the age of ten, I was in the church long before that. Sometimes I experienced this as a wonderful privilege; at other times it was an awful responsibility.

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The second consequence of my family's Christian commitment is that I did not choose the Church of Christ as preferable to some other religious group. I was reared as a Christian and later discovered that my membership in the church was to be experienced in the Church of Christ. All of us who have been thus reared must inevitably experience our church life very differently from those who choose the Church of Christ deliberately as a "way out of denominationalism."

Even before I was baptized I was a missionary. We were taught the Bible daily, we prayed daily, and we tried to convert our Japanese playmates to Christianity. We were taught to trust God and to be obedient to Him, and we learned that God has a special work for Christians to do and that this makes us all special people. About the only Christians I knew until I was ten were missionaries, and they all had this same sense of dedication.

When I was ten our family went to Nashville for two years while my father attended David Lipscomb College. We children attended the Lipscomb elementary school and we really thought that Nashville was Jerusalem and Lipscomb was heaven. What a thrill to be in a place where everyone was a Christian! I want to emphasize this because a failure to understand this rapture would cause my readers to fail to understand the conflict that later developed. As children, among the missionaries and at Lipscomb, we were not conscious of being in the Church of Christ. We were in the church, we were among Christians; that was the sum of it. It was all thrilling, meaningful, satisfying.

While at Lipscomb I responded to the preaching of E. H. Ijams and was baptized. It was there that Frank Pack, then a college student, helped me make my first public talk in the elementary school chapel. It was there, as a child, that I came to know and love the Baxters, the Ijamses, H. Leo Boles, and Hall L. Calhoun,

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as well as younger men like Frank Pack, Norvel Young, Howard White, and Batsell Barrett Baxter.

Back in Japan for my thirteenth year I was active in helping with the evangelistic effort. I decided then that I wanted to he a missionary and when we sailed in August, 1935 I said to my Japanese friends who went to the boat with us: "I'll be back!"

Thirteen years later I did go back, but before that I was to experience both the birth and the death of sectarian zeal.
 

SECTARIAN ZEAL

My junior high school years were spent in Los Angeles, experiencing the American public school and actively participating in church life at the Central Church of Christ. One year in Fullerton, California came next, and this in turn led to three years back in Nashville again at Lipscomb High. These were my sectarian years and they were dominated by my learning about two things: true morality and the true Church.

At Central Church of Christ I became one of the leaders in the young people's class. These lively adolescents lived in "sinful" Los Angeles and they both frightened and attracted me. I found release from my fear and feeling of inferiority by playing the role of the preacher. The elders were delighted and fed me with praise as I "courageously" attacked the sins of drinking, dancing, movies, and petting. And I, for all practical purposes, skipped adolescence. I still feel that the church is wrong to single out adolescent problems as examples of worldliness and lasciviousness. It's a wonder any of our young people grow up to be normal. Fortunately, most young people don't take all this preaching as seriously as I did.

Also at Central I met G. C. Brewer, one of the giants among Church of Christ preachers. I heard him attack communism, evolution, and the sectarian spirit he

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found among us. I was especially impressed by his explanation of how we might be a separate religious group and still not be a denomination. His logic on this point is a part of the heritage of our people and, while it no longer convinces me, is one of the most valiant and ingenious of efforts to escape our historical dilemma. He would say: "Suppose I have a bunch of cards and I sort them into stacks according to the name of each card. In the course of sorting them I find some with no name on them, so I put these in a stack by themselves. Can't you see that while they are not 'denominated' (bearers of a special name) they will inevitably be separate from those which are denominated?" He would then go on to castigate us for using "Church of Christ" in a denominational sense, insisting that in the New Testament the church had no special name.

As an aside, I must say that while G. C. Brewer's logic no longer convinces me, his spirit still commands my respect. His prayer meetings at Central remain in my memory as high peaks of spiritual experience. As much as any man of his generation he transcended the fetters of "the denomination that isn't a denomination."

While at Fullerton in my fifteenth year, two experiences reinforced the feelings aroused in me by G. C. Brewer's prayer meetings and these feelings, I think, helped keep me from being completely satisfied with the sectarian position I was to learn in Nashville. One of these was meeting and hearing J. N. Armstrong. He preached in a one-week meeting at Fullerton and was much in our home. He made me feel I knew how Elijah or Amos must have appeared. He made me fear God without being afraid of Him, and he incarnated a quality of goodness I had never before seen. The other experience was learning about the book of Romans from my father. He has always loved the book and he has insisted that Paul in Romans

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makes it clear that salvation is a matter of grace, not of law. It took several years for this message of Romans to take root in me, but the seeds had been planted.

In the fall of 1938, I returned to Nashville and Lipscomb, to spend three years in high school and two years in college. It was in Nashville that by the age of eighteen I was to become a full-fledged sectarian and where, by the age of twenty, I was to be well on the way out of that same sectarianism. What a place Nashville has in my heart! And how well Nashville represents some of the best and some of the worst elements of the Church of Christ. Ah Jerusalem, Jerusalem!

It is not easy to describe the power of Nashville. What a strange mixture of warm, southern hospitality and frightening capacity for revenge; of piety and sentimental devotion to the Bible coupled with shrewd, ruthless practicality; of fierce, almost paranoid, certainty coupled with fearful rejection of all differing views as "dangerous." In few places is the church so dominated by a few men, yet as I seek now to understand how I was taught that the Church of Christ is the "one and only true church" I find no particular name coming to mind. Rather does this central dogma of our brotherhood so thoroughly permeate the area that its source cannot be discovered. Like the myth of white supremacy, or the sacredness of the Bible, or the existence of God, it is taken for granted and never questioned. One may play at being open-minded; in fact, such play is encouraged to prepare one to be "ready to give an answer to any who asks concerning the hope within us." But one never really questions whether we are in truth the true church. To do so is taboo, unthinkable. And the few who seriously question are first laughed off, then gently warned, and finally ruthlessly cut off as dangerous and beyond hope. For three years I absorbed this spirit in which I was immersed and, scarcely realizing what was happening,

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came to believe this dogma and to be expert in all the tricky logic used to defend it.

By eighteen I was an up-and-coming young preacher thoroughly versed in Harry Rimmer's arguments for God and the Bible, H. Leo Boles' explanation of how the Holy Spirit can work only through the Bible, M. C. Kurfees' arguments against instrumental music, and Walter Scott's five steps in the plan of salvation. I could quote the proof texts that showed the church was established on Pentecost, and I knew all the examples of conversion and how to read Scott's five steps into each one, thus improving on Luke who wasn't quite so careful when he recorded the events in Acts. I knew the arguments against infant baptism, irregular keeping of the Lord's Supper, the missionary society, denominational names, and direct operation of the Holy Spirit. I could explain how the church started on Pentecost, grew until the end of the first century, apostatized and did nothing but sin until Luther sort of got things going in the right direction, and finally was restored in its purity by the Campbells. I could further explain that the intervening years were of no importance, anyway; that just as wheat discovered in a recently opened tomb of a pharaoh will grow wheat after thousands of years if planted today, so the gospel, the seed of the church, will, if planted today, produce the church of the first century.

Much like Paul, I outdid my teachers. I wanted to purify even the pure church in Nashville. When I preached against worldliness I did not stop with condemning drinking, smoking, and dancing. I went on to condemn tea, coffee, and Coca-Cola.

This period reached its zenith in the summer of 1941 when I did my first local work in Pennsylvania and held my first protracted meetings in Clay County, Tennessee. Nashville was proud of me, and though I had won an academic scholarship to David Lipscomb College, I was urged to accept a Biblical scholarship

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instead. I had become what Nashville believed in and I could preach "our" message from A to Z. Then I entered college.
 

THE WALLS CRUMBLE

What an intellectual challenge David Lipscomb College was for me! History reveals many strange events brought about by the inexplicable convergence of men and circumstances, and I cannot but believe that the Lipscomb I attended Nvas providentially prepared for me. Men such as E. H. Ijams, Norman Parks, J. S. McBride, S. P. Pittman, and Robert G. Neil were as refreshingly alive as any men I have ever known. I would not want to embarrass these men by holding them responsible for what happened to me, but I do want to record my gratitude for what they did for a cocky, know-it-all sectarian whom God sent to them for chastening.

As a sectarian boy-preacher two experiences signaled that my position was doomed. On one occasion I was preaching the typical sermon castigating the denominations and was making a particularly urgent plea that all people caught in the web of denominational prejudice should be open-minded. I insisted that they try to put out of their minds all preconceived ideas and read the Bible as if for the first time. At that moment it was almost as if a voice whispered to me, "Have you?" I was so stunned I could hardly go on preaching. I knew I had never really questioned my own position and I knew I had no business asking anyone else to be open-minded.

The second experience came after I had finished a particularly aggressive sermon against worldliness. I gave the invitation and challenged the hardened sinners to repent. The song ended without any response and we had the dismissal prayer. Then a little twelve-year-old girl came up to me and with tears streaming down her cheeks told me she had decided never to go

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to another movie for the rest of her life. I was shocked and cried to myself, "What have you done?"

It was thus with some chinks in my armor that I began to take the steps which in six years led me to the position which I have found convincing now for nearly twenty years. I trust it may be helpful to some if I elaborate on those steps.

1. The first step was the discovery that truth is self-validating and needs no external supports. The idea was planted while I was still in high school by a teacher who one day said of the truths in the Sermon on the Mount, "These statements are not true because they are in the Bible; they are in the Bible because they are true." lie went on to suggest that truth is the very nature of the universe and that what is true has always been true and always will be. This struck me then as being very important, but it was not until the following year, when I was in college, that I felt the full force of it. I still remember the night I decided that I did not need to carry truth on my frail shoulders, that it could stand by itself or it wasn't the truth. And so I unloaded the burden I had been carrying and said, "Tonight I will go to sleep and not worry about truth." With what relief and joyful ecstasy I opened my eyes in the morning to find that truth had survived the night without my help! I have never since worried about defending truth. Truth does not need us, we need it. We do not support it, it supports us. It is ours to accept truth, to obey it, and to proclaim it. And if we discover that something we had thought true is not true, we have lost nothing but error and are then closer to truth. I cannot exaggerate the importance this has had for me, and I can think of nothing that I would with more earnestness commend to my brethren than this attitude.

2. My next step was the realization that immersion in water is not a sine qua non for the regeneration of man. We as a people have consistently claimed that we

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do not believe in baptismal regeneration, but as a matter of fact our position comes down to this because we have never been willing to recognize as Christians the unimmersed. There has been no surer way to be branded as "unsound" than to suggest that we ought to fellowship Christians who have never been immersed. To my mind, there is nothing which so blocks the spiritual growth of our people as this position. Just as the Jews misunderstood and misused the covenant-sign of circumcision, so we have taken the covenant-sign of baptism and distorted its beauty and power in our effort to prove its absolute necessity.

As mentioned earlier, I had grown up in Japan thinking of other denominational people as Christians. I now began to feel our inconsistency in singing the hymns and using the Bible reference works of people we considered "out of Christ." But it was hearing E. Stanley Jones and reading his books which finally clarified the problem for me. It all boiled down to one simple fact: if God sent His Holy Spirit to live and work in a man who was not immersed, who was I to refuse to recognize him? And since the evidence of the presence of the Spirit is the fruit of the Spirit, then it is undeniable that regeneration is not always correlated with immersion.

I now believe that baptism plays much the same part as the exchange of vows in marriage. It is a profound covenant given by God and used by God for our salvation. People have been known to be married without a ceremony, but happy are those who, when asked if they are married, can say, "Yes, we were married on such and such a day." It is possible, also, that one might be born again and filled with the Spirit without being baptized, but happy is he who can with gratitude and confidence point to the day he was baptized.

3. Even more of an issue for our people has been the conviction that the Bible is verbally inspired. Rethinking this question was my next step. Most helpful

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to me was Harry Emerson Fosdick's old book, The Modern Use of the Bible. Reading such men as Fosdick, Sockman, Jones, and others, I came to realize that rather than making the Bible live, the verbal inspiration theory was killing the message of the Bible. I saw that while we virtually worshipped the Bible, we weren't really getting its message. Much as the Pharisees who "searched the scriptures" but failed to see how Jesus fulfilled them, we were experts in manipulating proof texts but failed to let the Spirit teach us. I saw that while we insisted that every verse in the Bible is inspired, we really took the position for practical purposes. In other words, we used verbal inspiration to give divine authority to the doctrinal position which we carefully extracted from (or read into) the Bible. I saw that while we claimed "every scripture is inspired of God" we used perhaps ten per cent of the Bible and conveniently let the rest go. Next to our position on baptism, I am convinced that our view of the Bible is the biggest barrier to spiritual growth among us.

4. Accepting the Bible as literature made me conscious of the importance of history. I came to see that the Bible really bears witness to God's activity in history, and that if we are to know Him we must become sensitive to what He is teaching us in the historical arena. I learned to love history and realized that historical questions must be answered by historical methods rather than by revelation.

This meant for me the discovery of the church's history and of our place in it. I realized that we had either ignored history or twisted it to suit our special purposes. I came to see the Restoration Movement as a historical movement and to evaluate it from the historical point of view.

Years later in Japan, a fine Japanese scholar who had learned something of our movement gave this pointed critique: "You folks have to make up your

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minds about history. First you take it seriously, seeing the development of the church from Pentecost until the end of the first century, then you ignore history for seventeen hundred years, then you take it seriously again as you see the achievements of your restoration movement." Of course, he was painfully correct. We must make up our minds about history.

5. The next step was the psychological. After Lipscomb I attended Pepperdine College in Los Angeles and was delightfully introduced to psychology. For me this meant learning that there are reasons for behavior, and that all human behavior can be studied systematically, including religious behavior. What a thrill and relief it was to discover my kinship with other people. My problems and conflicts were not unique and I had been feeling guilty for many things which were perfectly normal.

But most of all, the study of mental hygiene gave me a broader, more realistic understanding of morality and ethics. I came to see that holiness and wholeness are not only linguistically but essentially related, that the unholy is exaggeration of the partial. To be saved is to be made whole, and Christ is Lord because when we put Him at the center of our lives everything else falls into a harmonious whole.

6. Soon after discovering psychological man, I discovered man. It may seem strange to say this, but in reality I had been very much isolated from the general culture both in Japan and in America. The church had been my whole world.

It all came to a head one night when I saw the movie, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In the story there is a conscientious, good wife; a lovable, irresponsible, drinking husband; a wayward, warm, impetuous sister of the wife; and a little girl who lived by her heart. And I loved them all. I realized that people can't be divided into good and bad, right and wrong. I couldn't blame the good wife for scolding the husband and for

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trying to keep her wayward sister away from her daughter, but I could also understand why the daughter loved her father and her aunt. I left the theater and walked the dark streets of Los Angeles with a heart bursting with love and hot tears scalding my cheeks. I felt as if I had just joined the human race, and I felt as if I knew Jesus for the first time. With what stark clarity did I know then that it is not right to feel self-righteous and isolate ourselves so terribly from the people Jesus loved. We have been wrong to cut ourselves off from the world in our efforts to be pure. It has kept us from being the salt of the earth.

7. Also at Pepperdine I learned the discipline of philosophy. Studying with such men as E. V. Pullias, Ralph Wilburn, and Russell Squire I learned to be afraid of no question and I discovered how difficult it is to study any question with real thoroughness.

We as a people have been wary of philosophy, especially the philosophy of religion. But two values of the philosophical approach should, I think, command our interest: perspective and tentativeness.

Perspective comes from having a map. Certainly, studying a map is no substitute for actually living in the places marked on the map, but real experience is greatly enriched when we know something of where we are in relation to other places. As I see it, philosophy is simply our effort to construct the best map of human experience that we can. If we would discipline ourselves more with history and philosophy, we would be able to see ourselves and our beliefs in clearer perspective.

Tentativeness in the positions we take is absolutely necessary for real growth in understanding. Unless we can learn to investigate sympathetically new ideas while withholding ultimate commitment, we shall find ourselves fixated to inadequate positions which make all growth impossible. What I miss most of all in such papers as our brotherhood publications (e.g., The Gospel

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Advocate and The Firm Foundation) is a friendliness to tentative positions. How I long for a free forum among us where ideas can be advanced, tested, and then either pursued or withdrawn, depending on how they stand up.

8. From Pepperdine I went to the University of Chicago, and there I faced Darwinian evolution and Watsonian behaviorism. For me this was really coming to grips with scientific hypotheses and learning to deal fairly with them, whatever the consequences might be. It was there I heard the scientist's paraphrase of Job, "Scientific method is my master, and I will trust it though it slay every cherished idea I have held." I must confess that this attitude laid a firm claim on my mind, though my heart was reluctant to follow.

I now feel that any hypothesis is a tool and is to be judged by its usefulness. Such hypotheses as evolution and behaviorism are to be neither accepted nor rejected on the basis of emotion, but must be appraised critically on the basis of their usefulness in organizing and explaining observed facts. To the extent that any hypothesis is useful, we will use it; where any hypothesis fails to fit the facts, we will look for a more adequate one.

As for our faith, it must live in the midst of a world where we question, observe, and analyze any and all facts that come to our attention. Faith has nothing to fear from science or philosophy, and a faith that is not protected from the best academic research will be purified and strengthened. At Chicago I learned something of the strengths and weaknesses of science, and I learned that God is not afraid of anything man might discover.

9. It was also at Chicago that a whole new world of service was opened up for me -- that of counseling and psychotherapy. Studying with Carl R. Rogers, the founder of non-directive or client-centered counseling, I learned a new definition of love. All of my life I had

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struggled with what seemed to me the inconsistency of love's being commanded. How can one love in obedience to a command? But in learning to be a counselor, I found an answer that has satisfied me. The counselor learns to accept the client, whatever the client's behavior or feelings. This involves neither approval nor disapproval, but is a deep respect for the person and worth of the client. This, to me, is love, and this is something we can do in obedience to the will of God.

This concept of acceptance makes real for me the meaning of divine grace and forgiveness, and I can better understand the transforming, redemptive power unleashed through Jesus. I am now convinced that the church is failing in its mission of healing because we have failed to heed Jesus' words, "Judge not." We have relied on the power of social disapproval in trying to change people's behavior, rather than relying on the power of acceptance or love. In this, we have shown that we trust the power of the world more than we trust the spiritual power of love and holiness.

10. Last of all came the step of ecumenicity. Again it was in Chicago, the home of the Christian Century. Reading this most stimulating of religious journals, and hearing Charles Clayton Morrison speak, I became convinced that in the ecumenical movement not only is the spirit of Jesus very much alive, but so also is the spirit of Thomas and Alexander Campbell. Nothing is more incongruous than the attitude of the Church of Christ toward this effort at Christian unity! Of all the things which we have hammered away at, none has been more attacked than the sin of division. We have been the great advocate of one church. Now when this plea is taken seriously by the Christian world and sincere efforts are put forth to achieve unity, we have attacked the effort as dangerous, compromising, and sinful!

Granted that the ecumenical movement mirrors

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within its efforts all the failings of worldwide Christianity, it remains also true that it reflects the most earnest hope and fervent dedication of the best minds and spirits within the churches. We should rejoice in the effort of the ecumenical movement, we should participate with other Christians of good will in seeking ways to realize Jesus' prayer for unity.

With these ten steps over a period of six years, I was no longer a partisan member of the Church of Christ. All during these years I knew I had a decision to make. Should I leave the fellowship in which I had been born and reared, or should I somehow find a way to work on within it?
 

MISSIONARY ACTIVITY AND CHURCH POLITICS

Many of us have struggled with the question: What should I do when I find myself in serious disagreement with the position occupied by most members of the religious group to which I belong? The most obvious answer is, of course, to get out. Many have done this, and many of us who have not have been told that we ought to.

I have found the idea of leaving the group very tempting. Why not be associated with people whose views are nearer my own? To remain with people who find one's views offensive is to be either continually involved in controversy and disturbance or to be vulnerable to the accusation that one's silence proves one either a coward or a dishonest fifth columnist. Why, in spite of this, did I choose to remain within this fellowship? My decision was based on three very deep feelings:

First, my idea of the church is that it is not a voluntary association of people so much as a body into which we are born by the will and activity of God. Therefore we do not join or leave the church by choice. I can fail to fulfill my destiny as a member of God's people, but I cannot lay aside my responsibility.

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Second, I grant that one may choose to worship and serve in a particular fellowship because of opportunities for personal growth or greater usefulness. But personal convenience is too shallow a basis for one's religious commitment. The unity of the church will never be achieved by people of like interests and convictions banding together and calling themselves the church. The church is one, and it is made up of all of God's people. We do not choose our brethren; they are given to us by God. Once I thought members of the Church of Christ were the only Christians. Now I stay with them because I cannot deny that they are Christians (not the only Christians, not Christians only, but Christians), and I have no business withdrawing myself from any Christians, especially those among whom God has put me.

Third, I have felt that if I am right and my brethren are wrong, then instead of leaving them I should share with them what I believe. I know that this sounds proud, but each of us, it seems to me, has no alternative to this position. If I do not think I am right, I should change. If I do think so, I should not -- indeed, cannot -- change, and I should labor to convict others.

While I was still a student at Lipscomb, one of my teachers talked with me about my feelings. He asked me if I were interested in leadership. I said that I was. He then said that if a locomotive is to pull a train, it must do it gradually so as not to break the coupling. By being concerned only with one's personal growth, he suggested, one may, like an uncoupled locomotive, go racing down the track, but the group will be left behind. This made sense to me, and with the energy and idealism of youth I decided to commit myself to responsible participation in the Church of Christ.

For me this meant returning as a missionary to Japan where the end of Japanese militarism had opened up unprecedented opportunities for Christian

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missionaries. I was especially thrilled with the possibility of sharing in the creation of a Christian school.

From March, 1948, to March, 1960 -- for these twelve years the work in lbaraki, Japan was my life. Here was a chance to be constructive, to work within the framework of the brotherhood, to build on the foundation in Japan laid by my father and others, and to make a contribution to the Christianizing of Japan.

The first challenge we met was the question: Is lbaraki Christian College going to be in the main stream of the Church of Christ? Much of the pre-war work of the Church of Christ in Japan was done by missionaries sent out by brethren in Louisville, Kentucky, who were of the pre-millennial persuasion. So we were asked how I.C.C. was going to stand on this issue. Pre-millennialism had never been an issue in Japan, and most of us young missionaries did not want to make it an issue in our work. But we finally decided that if we were going to ask the larger brotherhood for support, we should take a position that would engender confidence. Thus we took a stand on this issue and committed I.C.C. to the main stream of the brotherhood and ourselves to the tortuous path of church politics. I'm sure we couldn't have done it unless we had had the help of E. W. McMillan and the Union Avenue Church of Christ in Memphis, Tennessee. These brethren, to us, represented the very best of the central movement in the Church of Christ, and we decided to walk with them. I still do not regret this decision and believe yet that E. W. McMillan and Union Avenue represent the most constructive elements in the Church of Christ. If one must be political in the church, one could do no better than to stand with men such as these.

The second challenge we faced was the radical differences we discovered among those of us who worked together to start lbaraki Christian College. Three of us were from Harding College in Arkansas and three

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from Pepperdine, and every time we turned around, it seemed, we were in a debate with one another. But after four years a strange and wonderful fellowship was achieved which was so unique in our experience that we still call it "the spirit of lbaraki." It is difficult to explain, but essentially it was the discovery that we could be different and still work together. Perhaps it is what Campbell had in mind when he said, "In faith, unity; in opinion, liberty; in all things, love." We discovered that while our explanations of the Bible differed impossibly, our proclamation of the gospel was very similar. Most of all, we found that it was good to be together, to play, to sing, even to argue. We found that we loved one another and that this love had nothing to do with the philosophy, or even the doctrine, held by each. And so we experienced the emergence of an atmosphere of love and freedom in which differing convictions did not need to be suppressed.

The third challenge we faced was that of being really non-sectarian. On the mission field we cannot escape the painful truth that "an unbelieving world is the price of a divided Christendom." It was my hope that while we confessed our roots in the Restoration movement and worked responsibly within the main stream of the Church of Christ we could still be representatives in Japan of the whole Christian church. Up to a point we were able to do this in two ways: first, by stressing the great central truths of Christianity like faith in God, Christ's atonement, and the Biblical view of life; and second, by working primarily in areas where no Christian work of any kind had been done before so that we were the only spokesmen for Christianity. But, inevitably, the question of our attitude toward other Christian groups became an issue. As far as possible, I wanted to work with them, let them share in the teaching program at I.C.C., and present a solid Christian front to a seeking Japan. Ultimately this be-

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came the reef on which my excursion into church politics made shipwreck.

Because of our day-to-day contact with one another, those of us who worked together in Ibaraki learned to live with the tensions generated by our differences. But by 1956, the criticism levelled against us by missionaries in Tokyo, together with the concern expressed by leading brethren from America who visited our work, forced us to back off from the policy of wider fellowship. And it was then that I began to see the limits that would be placed on our work because of our involvement with the main stream of the brotherhood. I carried out a policy of expedience until our return to America in 1960, but in 1962, when we considered going back to resume leadership, I found myself unable to agree to stay within the imposed limits. I had the feeling that after fifteen years of trying to pull the train I had not made it move much. And if I were to pull it at all, I'd have to pull it in a direction I could not conscientiously go. So I resigned from my church ministry, quit the faculty of Pepperdine College, and brought to an end my effort to achieve spiritual ends by political means.
 

A LAYMAN'S VIEW OF HIS PLACE IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST

It is still my decision to remain within the frame work of the Church of Christ. This should not be taken as a judgment upon those who have made, or will make, other decisions. I do feel, however, that I should try to state for myself and for others the way I now view this movement of which I am, in the providence of God, a part.

1. A historical movement. The most obvious answer to the question, "What is the Church of Christ?" is one of the least often seen in the writings of our people. The Church of Christ is a historical movement. It is one branch of the Restoration movement, a nineteenth century reform movement in America associated

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largely with the names of Thomas and Alexander Campbell. The original movement was conceived as being a part of Protestantism and must be classed with other "free church" movements. One branch of this movement likes to think of itself as being the main Campbellian stream while others are "digressive." It is my judgment, however, that the Disciples are the more rightful heirs of Campbell, while we in the Church of Christ are more the children of David Lipscomb, H. Leo Boles, and other post-Civil War leaders of the church in the South.

Three issues were important in the development of this branch of the Restoration movement that thinks of itself exclusively as "the Church of Christ" while studiously calling itself "churches of Christ." The first is that we have taken a negative attitude toward art and culture, as typified by our opposition to instrumental music in the worship. The second is that we have taken a negative attitude toward education and scholarship, as typified by our opposition to a critical study of the scriptures. And the third is that we have taken a negative attitude toward effective organization of the church, as typified by our opposition to the missionary society. All three of these issues make it plain why we are often called "antis."

On the positive side we have continued to profess our dedication to the unity of all Christians, although obviously we cannot be very serious about this. We have stressed simplicity of worship, which we have achieved to an admirable degree. We have stood for a study of the Bible, and this, too, has been a genuine interest which has produced a kind of Biblically informed people.

Our biggest problem, I think, is our stand on immersion. Our hearts and minds tell us that people baptized by sprinkling are Christians, as witness our use of their hymns in our worship, our use of their reference materials in our study of the Bible, and our

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use of their sermon books in the preparation of our sermons. But our doctrinal logic tells us that they cannot be Christians because they have not been immersed. So we must continue to refuse any fellowship or recognition to other Christian groups, and this is killing our soul.

2. Does the "restoration plea" have sufficient vitality for Christian commitment? This is a pressing question that all of us must face, but especially the young among us. I would answer both yes and no.

As a movement among Christians, I think there is a place for the Restoration plea. It bears witness to some important issues and can, if it is properly handled, make a real contribution to the total church. But to claim that we are The Church, the exclusive body of Jesus Christ, is unthinkable. We cannot commit ourselves to ourselves, and we cannot urge others to do so. By the mercy of God we are Christians, but we are Christians of a particular persuasion and a particular history. In other words, all our protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, we are a denomination. We should confess it and join all other denominational Christians in asking God's forgiveness and His guidance.

3. What can a "loyal opposition" among us do? These four things, I would suggest: First, we can be free. Freedom is not someone's gift, nor is it something we need permission for. We must not complain that we are not free. Christ has set us free and it is ours to act freely. Responsible ecclesiastical leaders have very limited freedom. Instead of judging them and calling them names, those of us who are not burdened with such leadership must exercise our freedom, for ourselves and for them. Second, we can confess what we really believe. Albert Schweitzer wrote, "Nothing is better than the truth." In Romans 10, Paul said that we must not only believe in the heart but confess with the mouth. God helping us, let us determine

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to speak and write our minds. We may be right or we may be wrong, but we can do no other than to confess what we believe. There is a crisis of faith among our people. Our pulpits are filled with men who do not believe what they preach and who dare not preach what they believe.

Third, we can act rather than react. Too many of us have childishly blamed others for a situation which is not their fault. Some may have chosen to be expedient and to reap the reward of popularity at the price of painful conflict. If we do not choose to be expedient, we make the choice freely and without bitterness, and we shall reap the reward of peace of mind at the price of popularity. Those who choose one course need not blame and judge those who take the other. God will judge us all and may He have mercy on all of us!

Finally, we can be what we are. Increasingly I have come to feel that the only real decision any of us has is Hamlet's "to be or not to be." In other words, we don't decide what we will be but only whether to be what we actually are. For myself, this is at the heart of my present strivings. I am a member of the Church of Christ, so I must be that. I am not in the main stream of this movement, so I shall not pretend to be. I am a Christian, a part of the whole great movement in western civilization that goes back to Jesus and the Jewish people, so I will sink my roots deep into this heritage and know my kinship with all other Christians. I am a human being, a man, so I will cherish my human soul and love all men as fellow members of my race. It is my intent to be all that I am, and I feel that this is not to be accomplished by giving up any part of my heritage or by leaving my people.

4. What is to become of this movement? God only knows, and it probably really doesn't matter in any ultimate sense. Certainly I have no compulsion any longer to try to "save it" or to "destroy it." God will judge and God will dispose.

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It seems to me, generally speaking, that we are going down the road the Southern Baptists have traveled, but about fifty years behind them. We are, like them, increasingly liberal in practical matters like Bible school methods, but like them, we are changing very little doctrinally.

I see a renewal of the "lay ministry" among us. Of course, we have never recognized the distinction between clergy and laity, but in the twentieth century we definitely developed a clergy. Now there are an increasing number of men who are preaching while they earn their living doing "secular" work. I am pleased with this tendency and predict that there will be an increase in it. In a church without effective organization, such as ours, this is probably the only way we can have a reasonably free pulpit.
 

CONCLUDING STATEMENT

I add this final word in an effort to give perspective. As I think back over the issues that have been such great concerns for me, I realize that many of them are of little importance when viewed in the light of the pressing problems of our day. The world totters on the brink of an atomic holocaust. America is torn by racial strife. Countless individuals struggle to find meaning for lives threatened by despair. Of what possible significance can be the conflicts of one small religious group?

I can say only that these issues have been most pressing concerns for me, and that I have found it possible to turn my attention to what now seems more important only as I have solved for myself some of the religious problems I inherited. It is easy for one not involved in such a heritage to say, "Why don't you forget about such petty problems?" For me, the only way out was to work through the problems and the foregoing essay records that long endeavor.

My prayer for myself and for all concerned Christians

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