LETTERS

Christian Century, March 10, 1999

Saving Christian colleges

For many years I have been protesting the disengagement of colleges and universities from their Christian churches (See "Rest not in peace," by Ralph C. Wood, Feb. 3-10).

The primary and unique task of the church is to proclaim the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ. Every activity in which the church engages must have that as its principal purpose.

The church may rightly do other things such as healing bodies, educating minds, ministering to the needy, etc., but for the church to be acting as the church, those other activities must be used as means of proclaiming the gospel.

Joseph H. Deibert Birdsboro, Pa.

James T. Burtchaell's book The Dying of the Light (reviewed by Ralph C. Wood in "Rest not in peace") is curiously silent about one not insignificant factor in the secularization of church-related colleges: the law. The Maryland Supreme Court ruling in the Horace Mann League case in the late '60s, and the U.S. Supreme Court 1971 ruling in Tilton v. Richardson, provided added impetus to secularization based on the principle that tax aid should not go to "pervasively sectarian" institutions.

Edd Doerr Americans for Religious Liberty, Silver Spring, Md.

Forgive my bluntness, but few books merit a review approaching 5,000 words. Burtchaell's work deserves no such attention, especially in a CENTURY issue featuring a host of old and new divinity schools and seminaries owned and operated by supposedly gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket universities Wood so fatuously condemns.

Among these is Wake Forest University, which tolerated Wood's hyperventilations for many years, and Baylor University, where he has landed of late. Both these schools fit comfortably into his and Burtchaell's category of institutions that essentially have divorced themselves from their mother church--in these cases to be saved from the ravages of Southern Baptist fundamentalism.

Perhaps I betray my own provincialism, but I'll take Wake Forest and Baylor over the Wood--praised Wheaton and Calvin any day--for spiritual as well as academic reasons.

Stan Hastey Alliance of Baptists, Washington, D. C.

Holy Spirit confusion ...

Thanks for the excellent coverage in "Priest shortage leads to closings" (News, Dec. 23-30). For many of us in the hustings, closings are integral parts of a very fluid landscape. Two of the three constituencies to which I now minister were once flourishing independent parishes with schools.

My second point has to do with the standard English usage of one word in the same article. Standard English understands the noun "muddle" to signify "confusion, jumble, mess." The correlative verb carries the sense of "to make turbid, muddy; to mix up (the mind), as with alcohol." Also "to mismanage" or "bungle."

I am astonished at the statement, attributed to John Acheson, that the Holy Spirit is muddling around in our lives. Muddling? The Holy Spirit?

E. Peter Royal St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Marlin, Tex.

Discouraging the call ...

I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Daniel Aleshire, and would like to make a couple of observations ("Seminaries and the ecology of faith," Feb. 3-10).

I discourage would-be seminary candidates. A person with a four-year degree in business, education or engineering will make much more money than a pastor with a master of divinity degree. This impacts the quality of life for clergy families. Second, the "hire and fire" language of referring to the "calling" is definitely out there. So being "called" remains a hard idea to sell to those who view the pastor as an employee.

Finally, a broad body of literature in publication seems to be advocating that the church eliminate the distinction between ordained ministry and laity. If this is the case, why go through the rigorous academic studies of seminary, relocate one's family several times, and then be greeted with a first-call parish that pays less than a junior high school teaching job or a two-year college-educated computer job?

David Coffin St. John Lutheran Church (ELCA), Montpelier, Ohio