Archive: Curriculum Confrontation: Louisville

By Charles W. Keysor, Editor, Good News

On April 14, 1969, 75 pastors met with Literature Editor Henry Bullock in Louisville, Ky. Discussion centered around a document prepared earlier by Rev. Les Woodson Pastor of Memorial U.M. Church, Elizabethtown, Ky. Most of this paper appears on pages 26-35.

One of the quickest ways to determine any church’s understanding of her mission is by reading her church school materials.

In the case of Methodism however, the materials are only giving the doctrinal slant of the members of the Board of Education and the writers selected by them. One of the most legitimate complaints coming from the people in the churches is that the Board is not speaking for them.

The members of the general boards are usually so far removed from the local parish that they are ill advised as to what the needs really are. While the local church should be served by the boards and agencies, the deplorable condition has developed in which the boards are dictating to the pastors and people. Therefore, the materials create a bad impression for The United Methodist Church when, in reality, they only reveal the views of a few men who have aligned themselves in the interest of a socio-political church.

The Curriculum Committee of The United Methodist Church (then The Methodist Church) Began steps in the mid 1940s to develop theological foundations for the new curriculum. The result was a comprehensive plan printed in 1960 in Foundations of Christian Teaching in Methodist Churches.

Let me begin with a quote From this forty-eight page book. “The Methodist Church is not a creedal, or confessional, Church So any suggestion of conformity On the part of any Methodist body would be inappropriate.” While this may be basically correct, we must remember that we do have a doctrinal statement in the “Articles of Religion” which restricts any individual or agency from crossing certain clearly-marked theological and ethical bounds with impunity.

The Board of Education and its writers in the youth and adult levels of the new curriculum need to come clean theologically with The United Methodist Church. Much of what is written in these materials is blatantly out of keeping with Methodist tradition. The worst evil, however, is the deceptive manner in which enough obvious truth is mixed with malignant error to make the body look healthy. It is a subtle and insidious evil which has been injected far enough beneath the surface as to remain unseen to masses of our dedicated but non-theologically oriented people.

In an attempt to get at the heart of this problem, let me cite some specific weaknesses and/or un-Christian premises taken in the bulk of the curriculum. After having looked carefully at these specifics (and I will limit myself to five sources), I will make a few observations of a more general nature which have grown out of the class-material confrontation itself.

(1.) Howard Grimes, in Real, (winter 1968-9), pg. 9, lesson manual for 11-12 grades, states, “There are answers which help, but there is no final solution to the problem of evil.” For two thousand years the Church of Jesus Christ has been preaching the Good News that Christ is the solution! We have seen far too much evidence of the totally transforming power of conversion to believe anything else.

I refuse to have my young people subjected to any teaching which renders the work of Christ even partially robbed of its final power and efficacy. … This is a fundamental point on which the whole mission of the Christian enterprise rests. If there is no final solution, then the Church is merely bandaging spiritual incurables in a sad rest home where men wait to perish from their terminal disease.

(2.) Newell J. Wert, in Dimensions for Decision (1968) pgs. 90-91, uses an illustration which is in very poor taste for a church school manual. My teachers were so embarrassed that they left it out without comment or dealt with it red-faced. The illustration is obscene in that it is treated without any censure. … The response which the class is asked to make is to be determined on the basis of relative ethics. The story concerns an act of adultery on the part of two married people.

What has happened to the Christian church school curriculum in which men were taught that there are definite moral absolutes and that decisions in such matters are to be related to what Christ and the Bible states? Dr. Wert says of the story, “Frank’s and Lynn’s capacities for eros may or may not help them solve the long-range problems of their respective marriages.” The whole matter of extra-marital experience is left so open-ended that the class is apt to make most any decision without regard to the divine absolute and think that they have  responded in a truly Christian fashion.

(3.) Van Bogard Dunn, in God With Us, (1968) makes statements regarding the Bible which come to a head on page 49: “We are studying the Bible, perhaps  the most important part of our religious heritage.”

Why this negative and weak approach to the holy Scriptures? It seems obvious that authority rests not in the Bible for this writer. Once again, it is the old story of endorsing subjective authority for one’s life.

Toward the end of the book is this statement, “The authority that the clergy exercise in the church is not the authority of external rules and regulations. It is internal authority, one that grows out of common commitment to a common cause.” (pg. 171) It is interesting that here the  pastor is advised to use his own “internal authority ” in preference to the external authority (which must include the holy Scriptures). Neither God nor the bishop of the church has given any pastor that kind of blanket authority. We were ordained to “preach the Word.”

(4.) In discussing the birth of Jesus, Dr. Dunn observes, on pg. 59, “The idea of conception by the Holy Spirit does not commit us to any particular theory of how the life of Jesus began. It does, however, express the fact that in the totality of his earthly existence we see revealed the fullness of God’s power and presence.”

The latter sentence is valid, though Christologically weak. But the first is in complete disagreement with the clear teaching of the New Testament. And, in view of the discussion in scientific circles today about the possibility of human parthenogenesis in the near future, continued negative reaction to the Virgin Birth is unscholarly as well as anti-Biblical. Some of us are sick to our stomachs with the humanistic approach to everything divine.

(5.) In the apparent interest of the excessive Rauschenbuschian Social gospel, Dr. Dunn says, on pg. 165, “In Jesus Christ God had not called men to a private and individual relationship. Instead, he had called them to a community in which they were to receive and reveal that quality of life which characterized God’s relationship to men.”

Such a statement is a glaring example of … “half-truth.” Of course, conversion must issue in a total participation in the life of the community. But let us be especially careful to make it quite clear that regeneration is a “private and individual relationship” between a man and Christ! Without this deeply personal kinship, all other relationships are empty and groundless. …

(6.) Dr. Dunn also talks of the changing forms of ministry. It is obvious that the whole section is an effort to endorse the social gospel to the near exclusion of the preaching ministry. After having made reference to the ministry of preaching, he writes, on pg. 170, “When a particular ministry is no longer needed, it should be discarded to make a place for a new ministry that is needed.”

There are those of us who still believe that the commission of Jesus put preaching high enough on the list that it is never to be neglected for other forms of ministry, valid though those forms may be! Where preaching is done right, it is as effective as ever! I am cognizant of the fact that the author includes other forms of ministry in his discussion, but the important point is that preaching is lumped with the whole gamut of suspect forms.

(7.) Again, Dr. Dunn says, on pg. 174 after a paragraph concerning the “God is Dead” theology which the author is careful not to condone or condemn, “‘The way for us to overcome our childishness is certainly not the way of the closed mind that shuts out every new thought.” This is true—but there is a second statement which needs to be added. Neither does one overcome his childishness by leaving his mind so open that every new thought of man drives out every old thought of God. The author is once more guilty of half-truth.

(8.) Howard Grimes states on pgs. 45 and 50 of Real (winter 1968-9), “The young person—or adult—who is seeking real life, authentic existence, salvation or whatever you want to call genuine human living … etc.”

Five pages earlier, he has made essentially the same vague reference to “whatever you want to call” this high life which the author is not at all sure about himself. This does not have the clear ring of the Good News of the New Testament. If this is Education, it is hardly recognizable as being Christian!

(9.) On numerous occasions, Grimes reflects negatively on the moral demands of the Bible, on pgs. 59, 63: “We have not completely cast out rules in this study, but we have not emphasized them … This is one of the troubles with purely conventional morality: it can make a person respectable but uninteresting. But there is another fault with a moral outlook which is highly structured and inflexible: it can keep a person from responding positively and creatively in new situations.”

This is a completely lopsided view. There is no justification in hinting that moral absolutes make one uninteresting. It depends on what one considers interesting. Hugh Hefner of Playboy magazine and I have divergent views here!

(10.) “Christian truth is therefore not ‘timeless,’ but set in history. God speaks to specific persons, in specific situations, faced with specific decisions,” , writes Littel in Real (winter 1968-9) pg. 94.

This sounds quite out of touch with the Master Himself when He says, “I am the Truth.” The Church which is faithful to Jesus as Lord believes that Christ is timeless truth. A theology or ethic which stems from man’s sinful human situation will be humanistic and sinful. There must be a point of reference in the search for truth. That point is Christ and His teachings.

(11.) Wright, in New Creation (1968) pg. 8, makes reference to death by saying, “A set of answers not supplied by television comedies, Playboy magazine, funeral flowers, or after-life theology is needed.”

If I understand what the writer means by “after-life theology,” it is apparent that he is far afield. I have been through that valley myself and I know that life would have collapsed without my assurance that my “after-life theology ” was valid. This, with emphasis on the personal relationship with Christ which makes such belief legitimate, was the only thing which made any sense to either my wife or me as she lay dying. Furthermore, to class one’s hope of eternal life with Playboy magazine is blasphemous and insensitive.

(12.) In relating the creation account, Wright states on pg. 19, “The physical form of man is said to have been molded by God out of the dust of the earth, and the inner power is said to have been breathed into man by God. ” Later, writing of Enoch and Elijah, the author says, “Both of These men were supposedly taken by God without their dying … ”

Whatever a trained writer may feel about these Old Testament  accounts, he has but little to occupy his time if he sows seeds of doubt in the minds of young people who already suspect everything except the world of pure matter. …

(13.) Anyone who can read the fifth lesson in New Creation, entitled “New Method and Renewed Vision” and arrive at some directive or draw some meaningful conclusion is either a genius or an imbecile. There is no meaning at all. And this is what thousands of our 9-10 grade students are subjected to during the one hour out of 168 during the week when they have a fleeting chance to meet the Christ.

(14.) The Board’s theological frame of reference is so openly excessive that no one in the conservative school of thought could possibly consider the Board of Education anything but non-Biblical. Of the 157 footnotes and suggested articles or books listed at the end of each lesson in New Creation, only 10 can be considered to be sources of evangelical or conservative thought. A total of 29 references were made to Tillich, Cox, Boyd, Bultmann, Robinson, and Pike. But only 18 references were made to the Bible in the entire quarter! The overall picture is just a little out of balance. In the Leader‘s Guide for New Creation, there are 19 lessons and only 13 references to Bible readings! Yet, Jesus Himself, in reference to His teachings which are preserved for us in the Bible, says, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” (John 13: 17)

(15.) By far the best adult manual produced in the New Curriculum is In Faith and Love, by Orio Strunk, Jr. This could hardly be otherwise since the entire work is biographical in nature and deals with the lives of selected great men and women. However, the personalities included are disciples of the social action philosophy with three possible exceptions: Rufus Jones, Joseph Gomer, and Simone Weil. These persons were deeply dedicated to a ministry of Good Samaritanism, as every Christian must be. But it is clear that there was something more fundamental than social action to these three people. Unbelievable as it might seem, there is a reference to a God-man encounter with each of these personages, an encounter which looks suspiciously like conversion. However, in the Selected Readings by the same title, Kagawa is quoted as having written of his own Christian work, “This spirit is not one that makes a fuss over religion or doctrine or belief or philosophy. It is not even a method of evangelism.”

While we are aware of the necessity of a social ministry, we believe that Jesus dealt with the whole man and not just his worldly misfortune. There is no Christian ministry deserving of the name which is not basically, unequivocally evangelistic. What the poor and oppressed believe is vitally important and must never be neglected in the interest of temporal support.

It is time that we refuse being swayed by men, living or dead, into an avenue of service which has not the imprint of eternity upon it. Social work without fervent evangelism is not fundamentally Christian. It is good and humanitarian, but it misses the whole point if it is not motivated by conversion to Christ in the life of the worker and for the life of the recipient.

(16.) Horace Bushnell is quoted in the same Selected Readings book, “What is the true idea of Christian education? … That the child is to grow up a Christian and never know himself as being otherwise … not remembering a time when he went through a technical (conversion) experience, but seeming rather to have loved what is good from his earliest years.”

Such a statement is utopian unreality. What is even worse, however, is the glaring discrepancy between this kind of philosophy and the teaching of both the Old and New Testaments concerning man’s being born in sin and standing in need of the  new birth. A child may be so trained as to grow up naturally loving what is good, like the Pharisees of Jesus day, and still miss the Kingdom of God by the distance between the head and the heart. As in secular education, so in religious nurture the individual must be born before the process of education can become truly effective. Religious education must either lead one into “a technical (conversion) experience” or proceed from such.

(17.) Toward the end of the above mentioned volume of readings is a quotation from Visser’t Hooft in which he turns cartwheels trying to justify the act of Bonhoeffer’s conscientious objection to war on the one hand and his willing involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler on the other. This sounds a bit like the rationalization of which conservatives so often have been accused! If we are going to deplore war as unchristian, then we cannot logically justify the murder of one even so evil a Hitler!

The inclusion of these readings in the Selected volume indicates general agreement by the editor of the text or some hint would be made to the contrary within the text itself. No one objects to the use of quotations as long as some clarification of position is made concerning them. Methodists would appreciate having quotes like this from Visser’t Hooft clarified in the light of our tradition.

Now, for some general observations. After careful study on an Eighteen-month trial basis, one of the young adult classes at Memorial in Elizabethtown has made the following accusations. The decision has been wholly that of the class itself without any concourse with the pastor.

(a) Not enough emphasis on Bible and its application in the situations presented.

(b) Bible references and application, if any, too elusive for average layman to grasp.

(c) Deals in a biased manner with social situations.

(d) No solutions given for Problems—not even Biblical.

(e) Deflates one’s spirit rather than inspires.

(f) Completely over our heads.

(g) Writers manage to get their kicks and political views, applying pressure toward their prejudices.

Several statements need to be made in response to these obviously serious charges. Our lay people are growing weary with the lambasting attempts to force them into social involvement without the essential motivating fuel which comes from the life of personal piety which is being almost completely neglected. It is all a form of social humanism which no longer feels the need of the historical Jesus, the Holy Spirit, prayer, the Church, or even God! Reconciliation with God must have priority before there can ever be reconciliation with our neighbors. Without this prior, vertical relationship, our social efforts are as futile as putting iodine on a cancer! Thomas Merton, the Roman Catholic, was right when he said, “To reconcile man with man and not with God is to reconcile no one at all.” Secular service without personal conversion is to be “weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

We indirectly brag on our own intellectual ability when we argue that people could grasp the new curriculum if they would apply themselves. This is not so. All one needs to do to recognize this fact is to look at the suggested readings in New Creation. These are 15 year old young people who are being referred to Paul Tillich. Multitudes of seminary graduates find Tillich extremely thick reading. Our people are unprepared for this 220 volt shock which has already blown out the lights for many of our young seminarians. We are asked to plug into a source of knowledge which can be disastrous because it is either too powerful for our small equipment or foreign to our spiritual proton-neutron arrangement.

Who are we trying to impress? Our ninth and tenth grade classes have both requested to use eighth grade materials. One of our Ph.D.’s has quit teaching because the curriculum requires more time than even he can give to it! The United Methodist Church needs to cease trying to be pseudo—intellectual and recapture the “warm heart” which gave it birth and made it great.

Finally, the writers do “get their kicks and political views” into the lessons with strong bias. A quick look at the MYF monthly “Common Life Bulletin” is a perfect example. The content of these papers would be ideal for inclusion in a political journal, especially if it were acclimated to “left field.” It is popular to talk about a Christ who was a social agitator, but there is strange silence about His recognition of the priorities of morality.

It is ironic to me that churchmen today combine “absolute” social and political programs with “relativistic” situational ethics. This is a commentary on Paul’s “natural man” who is quite “double-minded” (to use James’ expression) in all his thinking.

Only the eternal Word of God can show the relative to be truly relative (e.g. political systems) and the absolute to be truly absolute (e.g. God’s moral law). The United Methodist Church has just spent $ 1 00,000 on influencing foreign policy in regard to Viet Nam (a topic the materials writers enjoy exploiting) and called it “a new form of evangelism.” Influencing foreign policy is not evangelism! Such expenditure of money given for the true ministry of Christ is poor stewardship!

We still believe that Christ died to redeem men from sin, that God has given the Church only one Great Commission—to “make disciples of all nations.” The result of genuine conversion to Christ creates a social conscience. The Church was involved in social action long before the radical rebels exploded with their charges of irrelevancy. Of course, the Church was far from perfect. It always will be. But, I will stake my life on the affirmation that the Church did more lasting good in the world before the shifting emphasis of the secular element, which calls itself “the new breed,” than this novel and fashionable substitute will ever do with its weak theology, thin Christology, anti-ecclesiology, relative morality, and self-centered anthropology!

The curriculum content is vague about such “irrelevant” matters as the authority of the Bible, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the necessity of the new birth, the person of Christ, the value of the Church, the evangelistic mission of the Christian community, the integrity of Old and New Testament writers, the moral law, and the eschatological hope of the Kingdom of God. By the same token, the writers of the new curriculum are crystal clear about such concerns as the immoral war in Viet Nam, the brutality of law enforcement officers, the plague within our democratic form of government, the wisdom of secular philosophy, the right to dissent (and often to violent  dissent), the irrelevancy of institutions, the harboring of conscientious objectors even though atheists, and the compatibility of communistic philosophy with Christian truth. Under such an umbrella as this, our Church is in danger of helping create a society in which everyone is a “Christian” in name, and no one is a Christian in reality.

The new curriculum of the United Methodist Church (Adult and Youth levels) is guilty of pointing out the problems without offering valid, Christian solutions. This is wholly foreign to the kerygma of the New Testament Church! It is guilty of pessimism in concentrating on the problems of our time rather than on the “final solution to evil” which is found in Christ the Lord. It is further guilty of explaining the life need and expecting some sensible and Christian response without sound Biblical orientation and application. It is hyper-intellectual, super-ecumenical, anti-Reformation, and anti-evangelistic. It is filled with endorsements of the new morality, questions the authority of the Bible, emasculates Christ of His divine powers, questions civil obedience, and encourages the cause of atheistic communism. In “Christian Education” the emphasis belongs on the first word, and this is where the strength is missing in the new curriculum. Any jury in the land, comprised of men and women who love God, Christ, and the Church will reply, “Guilty as charged!”

I rest my case. Here I stand. God help me, I can do no other!