IMAGE

The Ecumenical Institute, born out of a resolution of the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches held in Evanston in 1954, understands itself to be vitally related to the three over­arching emphases that have characterized the Church in recent years: a theological resurgence in which the Church has been engaged in re­thinking its comprehensive sell­understanding and mission, the lay movement involving many experiments among the laity to embody their recovered mission in and to the world, and the movement of ecumenicity oriented in a fresh sense toward the mission of the Church at the most localized level.

Conceived in the pattern of its European counterpart (the World Council's Institute at Chateau de Bossey, Switzerland) the Ecumenical Institute was launched as "the Bossey of America," but without formal ties to the world organization. Under the leadership of its first director, German born theologian Dr. V/alter Leibrecht, the Institute developed an effective record of conferences, programs, and research projects geared toward the enhancement of the vocation and commitment of the laity, and attracting not only an array of world reknowned theologians but an impressive number of laymen, both churched and unchurched, into a wide variety of vocational seminars and other discussion groups.

These great strides (and others, such as the establishment of an outstanding ecumenical library) were made in the midst of a problem that perplexes many a new, experimental venture: the need for a way to relate to the formal structures of the Church with the liberty to perform a genuinely experimental task. This issue was long discussed by Dr. Leibrecht and the Institute's board until, in the spring of 1962, a way became clear to accomplish this goal while simultaneously relating to yet a fourth dimension of ecumenical renewal within the Church, the Conciliar Movement. Eight years after the Second Assembly, the Ecumenical Institute merged with the Church Federation of Greater Chicago, an organization through which member denominations perform services that are best administered ecumenically. Both the Federation and the Institute view the merger as an administrative experiment in the Conciliar Movement to discover a new way for councils of churches to serve their member bodies by providing ecumenical theological education for the laity.

Institute in Switzerlond, left, was inspiration for similar In$titute in America. Center, fir~t quarterr of instituto in Evanstan. Right, quarters and Dean's Re$idence secured in 1962 at

"The merger of this group's emphasis upon the practical, grassroots training with the emphasis of world churchmanship already present in the Institute's program," said former director Leibrecht, "will greatly increase the scope and service of the center. This is the direction that is being taken throughout the ecumenical movement. Now, with a larger faculty, the Institute will be able to accomplish the aims envisioned when it was first conceived."

Dr. Chandler, who took his post with the Federation some two years ago, was for ten years the Director of the Refugee Service of the World Council of Churches in Geneva. He is also currently the Religious Advisor for the United States Information Agency in Washington, D.C. His past worldwide experience and the immediate contact with religious movements across the world through his assignment with the federal agency keep him alert to the possibilities of new life and vision in the whole ecumenical enterprise. "The merger of the Institute with the Federation and the coming of the new faculty," he said, "both represent large steps forward in the realization of the dream of renewed vitality in the ecumenical life of the Church, and may constitute an encouraging sign for other such endeavors in the major metropolitan areas of our nation." (Continued on Page Seven)

appreciates their necessity. His problem is how to grasp hold in this bewildering barrage of demands and to maintain his grasp in every moment and each situation of his life.

MATHEWS: From what you've said, I see a man being pelleted by so many life­styles and so many practical demands that he doesn't seem to be able to significantly embrace any of them . . . He experiences his life as a kind of exasperation, born not of lack, but of over­fullness. You might say he is in a state of exasperating immobility. Would you agree with that?

MCCLESKEY: I would agree. And I'd like to underscore Mr. Cozart's comment that this man in the 1960's is not the man of a few years ago. The individual of the forties and fifties saw his life as a vast desert with only vacant horizons. It was empty, with nothing, so to speak, and he was frozen by it all. Today he may still feel liked he is on a desert, but now the desert is utterly full. He is still frozen but no longer in the same way. His immobility is actually a kind of uncertain searching, among many possibilities, for creative involvement.

PIERCE: You are saying that this is the down to earth spiritual situation of man today . . . Carry this a bit further, if you can.

WARREN: Well, what brought all of this home to me very clearly was the movie, WEST SIDE STORY. Here was a group of young people, living in the west side of New York City, who were liter ally surrounded with all kinds of opportunities to really live. The audience could see this very plainly. The players' crisis wasn't a lack of possibility for life. The crisis they faced was whether and how they were going to engage themselves in their particular situation . . . pick up what was at hand, so to speak, and find their life in living it.

MCCLESKEY: Exactly! This captures what I was trying to indicate. I also wonder if this is not what is behind much of the perpetual restlessness in a city such as Chicago, for example: this moving from one area or suburb to the next and the next, and in some cases back to the inner city, and so on. Is this moving not unconscious running from something? And isn't this some thing the very fullness of possibilities and demands present in every situation? Do we not falsely hope that life will be less complex-that is, less full-somewhere else, and hence erroneously believe that in that "somewhere else" we can more easily find and grasp real life?

PIERCE: You've painted for me a picture of a man driving along a super expressway who, while moving at high speed, reaches one of those complex cloverleaf intersections. He was the possibility of taking many directions, each that would cement his destiny for several miles at least, and all the directions approaching so fast that he can't read the signs; it seems as if someone has taken all the road signs away. It i5 exasperating, to put it mildly. And you do feel somehow immobilized.

SLICKER: I want to second the part that has to do with the universal and transcendent. Man needs to perceive graphically hat he has universal permission to decide his roles, to select the sphere of the world in which he will live and act. He needs to sense that the creative thrust he can and does make has historical importance. He needs this kind of clarity about his roles in various groups, and he needs power­giving visions of how such groups re related to all of history-how they have universal significance.

PIERCE: I sense that we are pointing to something important ere, but it is still somewhat disembodied for me.

MATHEWS: Well, for example, take the waitress I spoke with in downtown restaurant the other day. She likely commutes to the loop five or six days a week, and spends maybe half her waking hours serving tables. Are we not saying that her problem of meaningful living, her problem of being a human being, her spiritual problem if you will, is located right in the midst of her job . . . and not somewhere else? Mr. Slicker and Mr. Warren have in" fisted that, to really grasp her life, the waitress must have clear images of the way she, in her involvement, is a part of history, or of the total civilizing process of man.

SLICKER: Exactly! And the same is true of the railroad worker, he high speed business man, the insurance broker, the housewife, maid.

MATIIEWS: Yes, and include those of us here who are teachers. If you are right, we are all up against the same kind of problem.

MCCLESKEY: But this is not true of just individuals alone. The problem of images is also in our communal existence. Our neighborhood, our sections of the world, need practical images that illuminate the situation and that indicate possibilities. Take the Hyde Park area of Chicago, for example: How can this section of the city understand itself as Hyde Park, that is, as a part of significant history?

COZART: True, but doesn't this come to the same thing? I mean, aren't the individual and the community images finally inseparable? First man today needs the kind of images that communicate to him that he is not just a part of, but actually is his community. Secondly, he needs the kind of images that enable him to see his community as a community which has a destiny in history that is different from any other since the foundation of civilization. The waitress who travels the arteries of metropolitan Chicago to and from the Loop, who engages in its industry, absorbs its culture, and who is caught up, willingly or otherwise, in the city's influence upon the world, can, with an adequate image of the city as a vital force in history, grasp herself in her role as also historically significant or as "transcendently meaningful," if you will.

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object that they don't see the Church really concerned or doing this task, I would remind us that if one is to talk about the role of the Church in our day, he must do 80 recognizing that throughout all Christendom a great transposition is taking place. And I'd like to suggest further that the core of that renewal is indicated by precisely what we have been discussing, The Church today is becoming more aware of the real world and that she is a part of that real world, and that mission to the real man in the real world is her sole reason for being.

WARREN: This has certainly been the Iocus of the theological dialogue in modern times. The work of every major theologian since World War One has been an attempt to recover the idea that the gospel is divine permission for me, for my family, for my community, to live our lives.

MCCLESKEY: Further evidence of this, I believe, is to be found in the very existence of the ecumenical movement, the foundation of which (pushing aside many shallow and erroneous interpretations) is this new sense within the Church of a common mission to the world of our time.

SLICKER: A third great movement in the Church today needs tools. The education of the laity is not a matter of handing out images as one might an idea. Images are finally forged in the inner life by the individual in conversation with others. They relate one personally to life. Theological education is a matter of providing tools through corporate study and discussion whereby meanlng­givlng images emerge.

MATHE\VS: Mr. Pierce, I think these last few statements have summarized the issue you raised in the beginning. We started out with the spirit­state of man, his paralysis at the point of involvement through which meaning could come to him. We suggested he needed images of the transcendent, of history, of the city, of his community, and images of all kinds relating to everyday relationships through which meaningful existence comes. Lay training is concerned with precisely these matters, and this is a role of the Ecumenical Institute.

PtERCE: Thank you, our time is about to end. Such issues certainly must go on being discussed, for they are not the kind of issues that submit to pat answers. Further information about the Ecumenical Institute and a transcript of this discussion may be obtained by writing to the Ecumenical Institute at 1742 Asbury, Evanston, Illinois, or to the Church Federation of Greater Chicago, 116 South Michigan, Chicago.

1963 · CHICAGO

The Ecumenical Institute responded in October to an invitation to participate with the Secretariat of the National Conference on Religion and Race to be held in Chicago January 11­17. The faculty assigned one of its members to give full time attention to the work of preparing for the conference whose conveners are the National Council of Churches, the Synagogue Council of America, and the National Catholic Welfare Council.

The conference will provide an opportunity for lay and clerical religious leaders from across the nation to conduct a concrete examination of the role of churches and synagogues in meeting racial problems. It is a chance for religiously committed people to speak with one voice on racial issues to their fellow citizens and to the world. The commitment of religion to racial integration will be expressed.

Gene W. Marshall of the Institute faculty has worked since November with Mathew Ahmann, Executive Director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, in implementing the plans for the conference.

Marshall is a Methodist clergyman who was for six years a Chaplain in the United States Army before affiliating with the Institute. While in the Chaplincy, he was engaged in research concerning American youth in a racially integrated and religiously heterogeneous society, and was especially concerned with the problems of the structures of justice in the military setting.

He has traveled extensively in Europe, studying the development of the Church in its emerging new relationship to society, especially as this is manifest in the Lay Academies of Germany and other church experiments on the continent.

NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RELIGION AND RACE

tialities into history. The formulations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century existentialistic writers, emphasizing as they do the finitely human dimension of life, have becol~le exhausted as more and more prophetic figures are insisting upon sketching a larger, richer vision of what it means to be man. The theological constructs of those in the neo­orthoclox vein seem increasingly alien to the mid­twentietl1 century man whose cosmology helps him ima~ine a n~w ~hptil relatioll with time and space, historical past and future, a relation the dynamic of which is rooted in imperative. These are only two exarnpl(s of a growing feeling of dissatisfaction with the images and verbal tools inheritecl by the present generation. It is not a new experience in either the history of man or the history of the Christian conlmunity for a g'neration to dis. cover that its understanding of man and the meaning ancl direction of life cannot he forced into the images and verbal molds of the preceeding generation, but rather that it must forge its own life responses. It is of course clear that such forging does not take place in a vacuum, that is, outside boundaries of history but in fact becomes possible only by standing on the shoulders of the generation previous and the fathers in the faith.

At this stage in contemporary history neither the vision of man nor the new cosmology have gone farther than the initial stages of intuition and fragmentary formulation. ilowever, the major points of an outline are clearly en~erging: an ima~e of n~an as intentional spirit, an insistence upon the significance of all manifestations of hilman life, renewed clarity ahout human vocation, and a firm affirmation of history both in its broad sweep and in its particular and localized impact.

Keeping in mind the danger of imposing too early in the formulating process a restricting label, let us tentatively name this new cosmology and vision of man a "missional theology." Such a title gives preliminary hints as to the source and direction of a theory of learning which may mediate to our age a rationality for apprehending events in our time and space. It points to the need of formulating an image of man, not as he is in himself, but as he participates in .,..,. forges his future out of the , plurality of relations in whicil he always discovers himself. S`lch a title lalso points to the need of dt~linf~ating clearly the arena in ~vhicil man |tinds himself, a delineation which will eml once and for all the simple Idistinction hetween time and space and reveal clearly the intricate and |mutually dependent relation whicil himis together these two nmdes of defining the human arena. Further, a "missional theology" urges an aplPrehension of the social structures in which all men in the present agc |live, namely the political, economic aml cultural stmcturis of life. It is Ithis structural complexity reduced and simplifi'd olily at th' price of a depleted and unnourished hllman spirit which orders the colit~nt of al~y human situation and stands as a third relative factor hl the r( latior which holds together time aml space.

The present essay is an attempt to avohl fraglll'ntary forllmiation. It is a poetical~theological painting, imaging ill hroarl hrusil strokes the context and the tradition out of which the missional theology arises and something of the thrust which has brougilt it into being.

This task is life for Christian man. Before life, there was only silence or sleep or noise or frenzy. After life, passion fills his livin~ and all the rlirrlel~sions of his hul~anity, not a busy or despairing passion, but one whicil h`~speaks a n~an who has made a decision. His decision is to live. Aml h' krloiYs, now, there is only one way to do this: as task. Therefore he proclailils the in(licative, fulfillment and completion, as the imperative, alid he works out tlo imperative in time and space with sure knowledge, as if that for which he lahors is already given. The task is Ireely chosen aml yet it has hecome for hin1 as necessary as the air he breathes. He is therefore the task­man, the one who receives his life only in giving hililself as lahor on belialf of all humanity. IIe is the man returned home, for it is only herl aml llOW that he fimis the life opportunity for which he cearch( d througilolit the universe. He is the annointed son in the falilily of man; he is the Christ man, the man in community.

The task of Christian Iriall is always, universally, eternally, the same. On the other haml, each generation has a destiny whicl1 is uniquely its own, a task which can be pcrlorrlled neither by any one else nor at any other point in history. I'erhaps this is the way to mark off the generations, not by merely human birth and death, hut hy the particular kind of labor required at a given time and in a given space to actualize fulfillment and completion.

Each gentration rilust awaken to its own destiny, and this journey it makes only by means of an image, an image of man and his world and of what it rricans to he hurilan. Ilut wilat determines the form of a particillar ililage? SVhat gives it enabling power? What puts it in touch with the hulilan spirit of a time and space? There is present the great hotly of human wisdom collected througl1 the ages whicl1 widens the horizon and lengthens the tempo of life; there are the images which grasped men in earlier generations, cloaked in their art, their mythology and .:..:. ritua1; there are the structures of human society, those past, tho~c pres~mt aml those anticipated; aml there are the inevitable intrusivc ev~mts whirl1 shape m( n's responses and their irllagillational pattr rrls. All of these come to a giVCI1 generation as tools, raw materials hilt as such they form only the arena. Py the mere fact of their presence they are not th'rl hy related to thl human spirit of a given time and spac'~, arid they hay'` mitill~r form nor enal)ling power. No, bilages are erl at~ d, constructed, hy the 1llen of a particular generation out of the raw Iliaterial, the giv'n pow( r and the prevailing life storh s, of their age. Ililrlg~s ar' tr~atid hy a man who Iry Ilitans of an ilitrrition refined hy hl~hlity hr~aks thro~lpil the Irlind­s~t of his day, latching a glimpse of a fr~sh s~t of rthilirill~llilis to be ililagintd. 'Ih(y arc forged by a roirinilinity ,vhiril f'`ls tl'' pr~ssure of sigilificancc to do a particular task and th'ls, ~'t free hy d~lilaml, hriaks out into a n~w vision of what it ll,'alis to he man in thc worbl. Out of thc past, out of thc present, out of his own inttlition, man creates his images in order to relate himself fContlrlrle~l on Next Page)

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and space, that is to say, wearing the marks of the men who have chosen it. To choose to be this task on hellalf of all human history, not ate. stractly but locally, is what it means to be Christian man.

There was a time, and not too long ago, when this task was a lonely vigil. The new heaven and the new earth was peopled with radically individual pilgrims who had literally fought their way to conscious self. hood. The man in community was an angry man, hungry for a new style of living and impatient with the strange mixture of naivete and defiant blindness and deafness which he discovered in his world. He was an outsider, awake; and his keenest insight was that sleep had become a dan. gerous social condition. He was like the young boys in William Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES who discovered that perhaps there aren't any grownups anywhere and never would be, that there was no longer any objective authority whicil would assure security of heart, that if there

behalf of the saints.

In broatl inrush strokes such a painting as this may be a way to imaoe a cosmology for this generatios, and a vision of man enhanced by the spirit climension of life. At any rate it is at least clear that whatever the stance of mid­twentieth century man, he will not arrive at it naturally, that is by chance. Rather it will be an assumed posture, maintained by diqcipline, and th~'s either a vacuous shell soon to turn to dust or a life eternally cnrichetl and exploded by eyes and ears which insist upon participating in the joyous human adventure which lies beyond rigid parochialiqms and fancy schemes for escaping the discomfort of time and space. It is an old story, but now and again exactingly new:

". . . and to all he said.'11 anyone wishes to be a follorver of mine, he must lease self behind; day alter day he must take up his cross and come with n~e Whoever cares for his own sa/ety is lost; but if a man will let hilllsell be lost /or my sake, that man is sale. What will a man gain by winl~illg the whole world at the cost of his true self?"

NEW EXPERIMENT LAUNCHED BY PARISH MINISTERS

When a group of metropolitan clergymen choose to carve a weekly fourteen hour session out of their intermil~ahly busy parish schedules for the sake of a corporate experiment involving an adtled loatl of study and r~ flt~ctioll, it says something about the effervescive transposition that is taking place not only in the Church but in the world the Church is called to serve.

The clergymen are parish ministers from various denominations serving churches scattered across Chicagoland. The experiment is a course conducted hy the Ecumenical Institute, "Continuing Studi's for Parish Ministers." The course actually represents two parallel ar~as conductt~tl at Ollt~ hecause of their polar relationship: contemporary theology and the Illinistry of the local church in the present age,

It is an experiment in tht direction of a new approach to corporutr. mission, to discover how, thougit separated by geography and specific tasks, they Illay relate themselves to group thought and strat~gy: practical ecun~enicity for tile sake of getting a joh done.

Meeting in confer~ nce rooms of a downtown hank (chosen for the centrality of location in Chicago's l.oop) the twenty n~en arrive at eight o'clock on Monday morning and, except for meals, remain in conference quart~rs until ten at night. Ev~n thc m~als ar~ us``l for ~ xmndillg th~ conv~rsation that gOt'9 Ott ill th~ I(ctur~ ­seminar s'ssions which ~'l,phasiz/. n~ltu.ll di~courYe oll suhjects which have re~l''ir~d prior study preparation.

An ind~x to their conc~rn is a staggering list of prohl~ms facing the Chllrcl today. As conlpiled in their initial s~ssion:

· Thc problem of finding the ways and means of ovcrcolililig a paralyzilig bondage to cultur' without withdrawing from the worbl aml of con(lu' ring tl`~ '`~rn ^t ilitrov~r~ion for tt\,~ c~tr' of ',(m~lin'` miniqtrv to th' worhl.

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· Tlle problem of clarifying and embodying concretely a self­understanding and hilag' that grows oot of her history and is relevant in our present age.

· 'I he proLh m of colllmunicating with the real world in whicl1 men live today hotl1 in the sense of understanding precisely what that world is and is say. ing alld in the senre of articulating the good news in word and in deeds of living iustice.

The prol)len1 of dividetiness not only r'~lating to wilfull blindness that vio. Iat'Y our OIICl' and for all unity in the 1 ordsilip of Cltrist but as it relates to th' ill~ff~`ctiv' ~'X~'CI~tiOI1 of our calling alld missiott in and to the world of our thlu.

'1 h~ probl'lil of educating in deptl1 all the lilemiters of the 130dy of Christ today toward developillg an inforilled and 'fleetive citurcit leadersilip in the worbl wltich involv's discovering new, creative educational methodologies and ll''NV rt h vent titeological images.

· Tll' proLh r~l of imill'diat. ly and forthrigiltly casting out of tite whole his" torital llody of Christ ~ s~ ry vestige of th' structures of segregation to whic

Yil)flllll~ ss our '~y'Y hay`. now heen utterly and inexcusal)ly opened.

Ill additit)ll to th' hcrttres gi`~'m by tht p~rmall~nt faculty, the course in

~olv(` h~t~lr``s by gil'~Yts chos(ll for tolilpettne' in th~ir field, whetiler philosopily, art, linratur~ social scirnc~s or what~r. Current Illotion pictures are also shown and discuseed as well as oth'r art for~llY sucit as painting, poetry, ·` ~llptur~, ~ le.

Ill Ihr forthcoliling quarter, the course will be offer' d for a second group

while th' prt `' lit group engages in a furth'r course. Applications for both tours'` are'1OV., welcolile. D~tailed r~gistration infonilation and other data may h'~ ha(l by callim~ the Inqtitute.

designed for upcoming students.

It was a subtle change. Young people could still say in despair that "We are the hollow men," but they did not look for their heros to the great individuals of Hemmingway or Fitzgerald, nor yet to the unfortunates of Faulkner, Steim beck or Caldwell. There was nothing great about the way these adolescents felt about themselves, nothing greatly good and heroic or greatly bad and depraved. They only knew that the meaning had fallen from the "meaningless" world they had so recently embraced. 'I he comfort that some had derived from declaring openingly that life was despair had vanished in disillusionment. They were ready for a new "hero," a new symbol that would bring to focus the unfamiliar stirrings within them.

That I was first introduced to The Catcher in the Rye while studying ab normal psychology was no accident. In the early fifties students were turning to psychology with the hope (often disguised, for they could not admit hope of any kind to be a possibility for them) that by getting their interior being straightened out, they would find a rock bottom into which they could sink the pillars of a meaningful life. The answer to that longing was ready for them, and its name was Holden Caulfield.

Holden lived an interior life. On the surface he was a normal restless boy who refused to apply himself, but inside he was a creature of a genuine re bellion. It was not the rebellion of a former age that would set out to right the world through revolution in Spain or deny the world through revelry in Paris. Instead it was a calm inner assurance that the world about him was "phony," that he was the only one who knew it, and that he had to escape from this artificiality.

To a generation oi young Holdens, Salinger's hero came as a breath of fresh air. Here was someone willing to admit what they all knew to be true and, moreover, willing to do something about it. He actually had allowed him self to flunk out of school and showed no remorse at doing it. He had an inner assurance that allowed him to accomplish what most young readers wanted, but didn't have the courage, to do. Here was an individual who had the power to live, really live, all to himself.

liolden's was a private life that, no matter how lost he might be in tic midst of Pency or New York City, had intrinsic meaning. Refusing to live by the symbols of the prep school where life was fed by cheers at athletic festivals and grades from senile professors, Holden developed a symbolic life of his own, partially composed of ducks, a red hunting cap worn backwards, and a phono graph record. Nobody needed to tell the students who now read The Catcher in the Rye what the ducks on Central ['ark's lagoon meant. They, too, wondered where those birds went when the water froze, fur weren't they in exac~ly that situation? Where could they go now that the world about them had "frozen over?" Likewise, they longed to wear their hunting cap backwards as a sign that they were no longer "deer hunters," but were "people hunters." Holtien whispered the words that the student wanted to say when he saicl, "I shoot people in this hat." A whole generation of students wanted to shoot those who pretended that life hav a meaning, when they knew very well that it did not. Theirs was a withdrawal into themselves that was, at the same time, a rebellious lashin~ out at the whole world.

They gar~e it up before they euer really got started.... I can very clearly see you dyillg nobly, one lvny or another, for some highly unworthy cause.

The life of private syn~bolism '~ust give way to the d~ sire to pass that ~lleaning on to others . . . and the way to do so is through a "cause." The cause, of course, would be a worthy one, not phony, but gerluine. Mr. Antolini knew, however, that, from the perspective of reality, the cause would turn out to be unworthy, i.e., phony. The student gtneration that is jllst now passing felt that it had "hit bottom" with The Catcher in the Rye, aml the very moment they did so the "fall" be~an

The i'lollotv Men could now be quoted, not in despair, but in triumph. The only men who were hollow were those who dhi not see that there was no purpose in life and who illsisted on searchillg for one. 13ut they were hollow only ill a killd of doullle sense, for the meaning of life lay in hollowness. Holden, who hud searchecl for meaning throllgll internal rejection of the phony world, became the symbol for significallt life when he externalized the rejection by choosing to leave school and live by his own symbols alone.

When there was no further need to search for life significance young people were free to embark on wltatever crusades Illight be available, in the awareness that they were right. IhUS, the generation schooled.by Holdep found segregation to be a grlat evil ill thc school systlm and b~so~ciety~at large, and took it upon thllIl~llvls to right the wrong. Ollly a few years ago, I watched student after stud~ llt fl~lnk out of school, not because,~he was incapable of academic achievenll~nt, but because he was totally illvolved in the movelllent to integrate the theatres and eating ~ stablishmellts ahollt the. university. The private world of Holdelt Caulfield had h~ come such a ~ eneral world that those who selfcollscio~lbly found thelllsl iv's witllin it could hand together in a barely conscious secret society. 'Ihe studellt generation bred by 'I'he Catcher in the Rye had followed the internal rl bel to his logical conclusion.

11.

To people who remclllberecl the communism of the 1930's, what was happen ing in the lat~r y( ars of thc sixth decalle of the twentieth century looked strangely Iamiliar. In fact, primitive communist documents were once more beille rl ad with entllusiaslll, and the rebellion of Castro in Cuba rang many sympatlletic cllords withill the Holden Caulfields of 1959. The book that J. D. Sialinger had f~st pllblisllcd in 1915 alld that had corlle to fruition by 1955, had done its job, bad rllll its collrst, alla a nlw work was needled to focus the ood of a new day.

That book was l.ord of the Flies hy William Colding. I.ike The Catcher in the Rye, (folding's book lay fallow for six y~ ars after it first appeared. After all, how was a talc that ~ Illploye(l group sylllbols to be heard in 1955 when internality seemed to be the road to salvation I Yet by 1960 its fame was beginning to spread.

the ritual dance during which Simon is killed. But unlike the others, Ralph ancl Piggy choose to affirm the possibility of rescue and actively endeavor to affect that rescue.

The young reader of the novel is presented with these two options for his own life style. Like the marooned boys, he is tempted to throw over his history in a bid for freedom. No doubt, the picture presented by Jack has strong appeal for him. It is the appeal of a possible line of action, however, not the appeal of the subconscious Id or the hitherto white­washed Original Sin. It is, indeed, a line of action quite in harmony with what he has experienced.

Trilling says that "Mr. Colding is able to . . . persuade us that the boys are not finally under the control of previous social habit or convention (I can't help thinking, though, that I should not have credited this quite so readily of Amer" ican boys, who would not, I believe have been so quick to forget their social and moral pasts.)" It is difficult to see how he can say this. The issue at stake is not that of a group of boys who forget their social and moral past. Rather, it is that of two groups of boys, each of which chooses to remember and embody a definite and different portion of their social and moral past

The fact that it is necessary to speak of groups rather than indivilluals reveals another reason why Lord of the Flies hnlls youthful readersilip. Si~lce the early to mid­fifties, the ~nind­set of our culture has almost reversed itself. No longer does the lonely individual have much allure. HohJen Caulfiehl wanciering the streets of New York trying to escape the phony world alone has been re placed IJY a. group of painted former schoolboys feverishly dancing about a pig's head The function of the individual is now to be an indistinguishable part of the group enterprise, whether it be slum gang or higllly respectable corpora. tion. SVhether for good or ill, the time when the imliviclual could stand alone, living his private and i~lternal life, is no more. Indeed, the present tin~e and its mood suggests that such a life was never a genuine possibility.

It is not surprising, therefore, tltat a book like Lord of the Flies, unread in 1')55, shor~l~l suddenly be found by the 1960s. Its symhols are comnlr~nity sy~n. bols-not private as lIohlen's were. The prime symbol for Ralph and his group is the conch shell with which assembly is called; for Jack it is body paint which "clothes" the savages after th~v have given up the clothing of English school iJoys.

Thc young reader of today WtlO responds to the call of the conch, who identifies with Ralph, might be a leader in high school or college, well thought of IJY the school administration. Ile may be president of the school s'rvice club, a master of parliamentary rules. He probably would not know what to do with himself if he found himself alone. Ile is always at meetings ancl always handles them well. He has the entire support of the adult community, for it is clear that he will become one of its leaders.

The young reader who identifies with Jack, on the other haml, has contempt f~,r thos`~ others on his campus. IIe knows that they are phony in the way llohl(ll would d~fine tbl word. If hc Itas u school position, it is probably tltat of rlewspaper editor, or more likely, editor of the calllplls hlllllor nlagazine that is only tolerated by school ofEcials. Like Jack, he goes ahout with a troup of his followers, dependent upon then1 for support as they are dependent upon him and each other. Often they will adopt some identifying stylh of dress. Th'y may, for example, readily be known by thc studied disrepair of their hair, beards, aml clothing.

In literature, we may expect to find sc lf conscious attempts to mold readers into homogeneous mobs, with no purpose but <lefense against the Beast loosed

'try themselves in the world.

On the other hand, if the first alternative prevails, we may expect to find

I novels, stories, poems, and plays being written once more with heros who have deep purpose for life but none of the romantic covering traditionally associated witlt that tcrlll. This will be a delllancling literature, clemancling not in terms of structural complexity or linguistic clifflculty, but in temls of the clailn it will make upon its reaclers to assume their rightful ancl responsible place in society. The group will not be forgotten, but will become a means rather than an end. The indivirlual will not be exalted at the expc nse of the society; he will be clepictecl as a man willing to take responsibility for the group upon his own shoulders, while remaining fully himself.

The writers have not yet appeared who will write this literature. Let us hope they have been born.

Continued Irom Page One

THE ECUMENICAL INSTITUTE

Mr. Mathews comes to the Institute after six years as the director of studies of the Christian Faith­and­l if e Colllmullity, a research and training center in Austin, Texas. Before affiliating with the Texas organization, he held the Chair of Christian Ethics, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Prior to his four year t'nure at Perkins, he was a professor of Pllilosoplly and Religion at Colgate University, Ilamilton, N.Y., where he taught for four years. He is known throughout the lay movement, having visited most of the major centers of the worlcl. In 1957, he was sent to Europe to analyze the post war developments in the Churcll with particular concern for the special experimental projects for church rene~val which constitute the lay movement.

SVhile affiliated with the Austin organizatioll he pursuecl the problems of both thrological and secular eclllcation of layml n as a means of church renewal, illitiating major research programs having to clo with the continuing eclucation of parish and calllpus ckrgy and laity. lJnd~r his leaclership, the Institute's faculty, who were also associated with the Texas project, pioneered clevelopmLnts in Christinn worship, theological curricula for laylllen, and the relation of Christian community to mission, originating a fresh concept of corporate ministry as an rffectiv~ Illeans of rcIlewing Christian life and the local parish.

Ilow will the Institute go about exploring new rtrategies between the Church today and a culture that is undergoing crucial transposition? In the present issue of Inla,ge and in each future issue the faculty may be met as they do the corporate research that will answer this cluestion. An initial context for the Institute's role may be read in the transcript of a faculty television discussion herein. In this context, the Institute will be grappling with the problems of the Churcll and investigating the ways and means of creating the new tools by which the renewal of the Churclt in her mission to the world may take place in every part of our nation, from the smallest village to the teeming metropolis.

THE MISSION OF MEGALOPOLIS

By WILLIAM R. COZART For The Corporate Office

MOST MEN LIVE in the great cities. Above them is smoke. Beneath them, underground trains scream through black caverns. Inside them there is nothing. Nothing but nets. Nets of pain and monotony. Nets of the fears of all the grief that life can bring. Nets that entangle both the unaware and the lucid.

A eity of nets. That was Bertolt Brecht's vision of the great modern metropolis, in which most men yearn their hopes, suffer their passion, die their deaths. It was a vision of urban life as a great ambush which ensnared even the most cunning, of urban centers as predatory octopi which uncoiled their twisting avenues like gigantic tentacles, sucking in the commuting masses at 9:00, disgorging them at 5:30.

Yet within this urban monster, one could still find here and there a few men who found life worth living. even among the nets. One such man was Jimmy Mahoney, in the 1930 Breeht­Kurt Weill opera, Rise and Fall ol the City of lliahagonny. One dark night, Mahoney discovers that he must die, leave the (Continued on Page Eleven)

IN THIS ISSUE:

The Ecumenical Institute, Outgrowth of the Second

Assembly

The Urban Image Consciousness and Lay Theological

Education

To Walk Uprightly: imaging a missional theology

The Duty and the Beast: a new era of commanding

literature

Introspection in a Local Church: a layman's check list

The Mission of Megalopolis: an irrevocable given

IMAGE is edited by the faculty and interns who are the Corporate Office of tho Ecumenical Institutr,: Joseph W. Mathews (Dean), L. Thurrton Barnetr, Allan R. Rrockway, L. Fredric Buss, William R. Cozart, Robort Hoyt, John M. Kondrick Ger~o W. Marshall, David M. McCleskoy, Josoph L. Pictco, Joseph A. Slicket Donald R. Warren, and L. Dale Wright.

imA e Journal of the Ecumenical Ins.t,itute

9 1742 Asbury Avenue, Evan.ton, Illinois

JANUARY, 1963

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Continued from Back Page

THE MISSION OF MEGALOPOLIS

earth and its Netzestadt forever. But before submittin6 to his final end, he turns to his fellow citizens and sings 8 strange warning:

Don't let yourself be deceived, that lile means little.

Drain it in giant swallows; you will not have had enough, when you must leave it.

Don't let yourself be put off; you don't have too much time.

Let moulder those who've perished; life is the highest thing;

it'll never be waiting again.

Terse and blunt, these words nevertheless point to a crucial recognition of the mollern sensibility: Life will never be waiting again. It is here and now, or not at all. And, moreover, it will never be given in some world where urban life does not exist. The exploding metropolis is an irrevocable given of our century, and all our hopes of what life could be must somehow come to bloom within its concrete walls.

A vital consequence of this recognition is the ever­expanding library shelf of books on urban renewal, urban redevelopment, city planning, city management. One of the most important ol these books to appear in recent years is Lewis Mumford's The City in History. Alter tracing the successive transformations of the city Irom its prehistoric origins to the sprawling, merging conurbations of today, Mumlord presents a startling idea regarding one of the city's principal lunctions: namely, the city must serve as a museum. It must not merely contain museums, but he a museum in its own right. For, as Mumlord con tinues, "the historic city retains, hy reason ol its amplitude and its long past, a larger and more various collection of cultural specimens than can be found elsewhere. Every variety of human function, every experiment in human asso. ciation, every technological process, every mode of architecture and planning, can be lound somewhere within its crowded area.

"That immensity, that retentiveness, is one of the values of the big city.... 11 all tbe materials of our culture were too widely scattered, if the relevant data and artifacts were not capable of being assembled in one place, assorted, made available for redistribution, they would exercise only a small Iraction of their influence." However, because the materials of man's great civilizing adventure are contained within its limits, Mumford asserts, the great city is the hest organ of memory man has yet created. In actuality, the modern city is nothing less than the living memory of the human race.

If Mumford is correct, the city dweller of today is virtually engulfed with reminders of the way the past has conceived the meaning of heing a human personality on this planet. Yet all too often, today's urbanite wanders mechan

Relevant at this point is a remark Roger Bacon once made to his contem poraries "The things of this world cannot be known except through a knowledge of the places in which they are contained." For it is the containing­places that transmit to men their sense of space, and the way space is lelt to a large degree determines men's image of the''lselves as they move about, as well as their perception of significant objects in space.

In the course of daily activity, men rarely notice city huildings in any detail unless they should be intent upon locating a specific address or a "must" tourist attraction. Yet, silently, relentlessly, the city is talking, sending out signals to man's twilight zone of conscious perception, drawing him forward, reversing his direction, beckoning him into the unknown and the unexpected. Millions of signals bombard him, sensations of color, shape, pattern, and concentrations of light, sound, texture.

The impact of such an environment, says Kevin Lynch in The Image of the City, demands that the cities encircling man be "legible"-that is, filled with clear and distinct clues to direction and movement. There are, in Lynch's opinion, no less than five principal conditions for legibility: Paths. the channels lor movement, include s(rects, walkways and transit lines which clearly an. nounce their directional character. Edges are the linear elements of the city- a shore line, railroad cut, or wall-ancl may be felt either as harriers blocking man's freedom or connectors moving him forward to a greater openness. Often, edges help to define districts, those sections which have recognizable individuality, as do Chinatowns and Nob Hills. And, interestingly, districts often cluster about strategic points, or nodes, where an intensively used junction in means of transportation bring many people to a convergence of paths. Nodes operate in the life of the city like magnets, drawing the masses toward them and creating new kinds of Ituman community. Sometimes the nodes contain landmarts-a buiLling, a sign, a physical object, a mountain, a patch of grass -signifying something of importance to the communal history. These landmarks contribute vitally to Mumford's image of the city as museum or living memory in that they constitr~te a~l urban form which thrusts history into the midst of a contemporary colllmunity and which forces city dwellers to assess (and, hopefully, to appropriate) its meaning for their present situation.

This new langrlagc for describing urban forms is arising on all sides, and is forming a major element in the movements to recreate life in the great metropolises. It is taking its place ill the new dialogue in our culture between the fantasy­life produced by the mass media and the recovery of the usable history of man by scholars, artists, and other intellectuals. Referring to the tumultuous tidal wave of fantasies which pour forth from millions of television sets each evening, Andre Malraux recently commented, "Today's mass media are pouring forth the enorlllous llooll of dreams that we now call mass culture, which our illtellectual culture see1ns to oppose . . . Our civilization produces as many dreams in a week as it does machines in a year, thereby instituting a fantasylife which the world has never before known . .. The wave of fantasy breaking over every city erected by our industrial civilization is coupled with the discovery and appreciation of the past of the entire earth.",And it is this discovery of the past, of our common human heritage, that must give form and direction to the great shapeless dream surging out of the unconscious of crowds.

Indeed, the mass media-particularly the press and television-are performing a vital service in creating new expressions for the feelings and fantasies of a nation, and in awakening each citizen to the unique burden of dreams he carries within himself: dreams which long to burst forth into history. And it is

1

NUMEROUS ASSIGNMENTS FILL FACULTY CALENDAR

Corporate assignment of faculty members to participate in co~ilcrences and other speaking engagements is a regular part of the Ecumenical Institute program. E{e~luests are so numerous that they must be channeled thro~,gh a recently established bureau in order to clear the speaker's tillm in reh~tioll to his pedagogical load and administrative assignments in the various programs that are directly conducted by the Institute.

In the past several months, members of the faculty have been engaged to speak to and participate in conferences, meetings, congregations, and secular groups as follows:

Annual Retreat of Greater Chicago Churchmen at Lake Forest Academy News of Religion Telecast of WBBM­TV

National Conference ol the Association ol Church Council Sccretaries, Lake Ceneva Retrcat

First Presbyterian Church, Itasca, Illinois Congregation Solel, Glencoe, Illinois

Calvary United Presbyterian Church, Park Forest, Illinois Wauconda Federated Church, Wauconda, Illinois

Westminster Fellowship Regional Conference, I'leasantville, Tennessee Elemenway Methodist Church, Evanston, Illinois

St. John United Church of Christ, Melrose Park, Illinois l.akeview Methotlist Church, Chicago, Illinois

New Fricndship Missionary 13aptist Church, Chicago, Illinois

COMING EVENTS AND PROGRAMS

For the Institute faculty, spring comes in the winter as winter came in the fall and fall in the summ~r, as with all program planning. Based on a schema ol the meiropolilan area developed during the sullllller, the eight eight­week programs ol the School Of Rcligious Studies will bc relaunched in locations varying accordillg to thc locatiolls ill tht preceding eight weeks so that in a given year all areas of the metropolis arc reached, inner city and suburbs. In addition, four eight­week advanced courses will be centered in locations adjacent to areas where participants have already taken the basic course.

The Continuing Studics for Parish Ministers will also begin a second six. week session in the Loop.

This quarter, the Institute will conduct two programs for youth, one in the inner city dealing with juvenile gangs, tht otber dealing with youth from two suburban cities. A special Icad'rship Iraillillg progran1 will be taught for leaders in local congregations in onc of the suburbs. A series of lenten lectures will be provided in another church. Another special program will be a weekend retreat for sixty young adults of a city parish. Specific dates and places may be obtained from the Institute concerning all of these conferences and programs.

At the request of the F.cumellical Institute at Chateau de Bossey, Celigny, Switzerland, we arc pleased to rclllin(l our European readers and those who may

1

The Commuter

He looked so very much a human being,

And dozed his opened eyes behind bare newsprint;

Did trundle along not daring to unvent his passion.

So vibrant his creased suit illumined,

Unending exploits he fabricated daily.

Boiling with a freezing energy unreleased,

He sat unmovable and thoroughly analyzed.

-David M. McCleskey

Continued from

Preceding Page

B. In terms of manpower, who is to do what. how, where, when and under the direction of whom?

1. What is the present role of the duly constituted lay member bodies of the church, such as:-

a. The Trustees?

b. The Church Council?

c. The Deacons and Deaconesses?

2. In terms of church aspirations, what must the role of these bodies, and their officers, be?

3. What is to be expected of the ministerial, auxiliary professional and the clerical staff? In terms of functional

a. Initiative

b. Imaginativeness c. Authority

d. Responsiljility

~ ~ :~=, ~ ~:~ i~:~: ::

Friends of the Ecumenical Institute

In the United Statos

And Abrood

Greetings:

We have had greot expectations over the past several months as we ontici. pated sending you the first issue of our publication. As you read through the articles, we think you will readily see why we have chosen IMAGE as the name of this journal. Had we chosen a word other than ECUMENICAL to madify IMAGE it probably would have been PRACTICAL or one of its synonyms. Prac. tical images give functional illumination that enables and propels actian. We hope that IMAGE will be of service to you in forging your strategies in the plans of action that you develop for the renewal of the Church.

, his is an app. jpriate time to express our deep appreciation far your letters of encouragement and your gifts to the Institute. Please receive this publication as one expression of our gratitude. In these pages, we hope you will find the kind of sharing that many of you have requested: articles, comment, and features that universalize the data and experience derived from the research and educatianal experiments conducted by the Institute, making available to you the keenest edge of our current reflection and work.

Our budget dictates the culling of our mailing list to those who are vitally interested. If you have not let us know explicitly that you wish to be retained on the list, please drop us a note as soon as it is convenient.

We also solicit your reflections upon issues of our common concern to provide the tools whereby the renewal of the Church may take place for the sake of the civilization of twentieth century man.

-Joe Pierce, for the Corparate Office

BORROWING FROM PAUL

~ ~ ~ ~ ~:: ~ i :: :~ ~ :~ ~ ~ ;~: ~: ~: ~ :~:

In his letters to the churchts, Paul asked forthrightly for funds. The church in Jerusalem'leeded help that would have to come from the young churches, if at all. One wonders vAlether Paul's concern was not equally pedagogical: that the churches in Jerusalenl, Asia, aml the known world grasp a vision of the whole people of Cod and assume responsibility for the mission of the total church.

I.et us inlitate Paul in his straightforwardness. Your support is needed for ec~ll~lellical experLnentation on behalf of the Church's ministry to civilization. 'I'his support must be exptcted from persons who share the conviction that new

gation desiring to do so could be involved in thinking the matters through and thereby feel that they had a more intimate part in the maintenonce and extent qinn of this church as a sDiritual and social force in the community.

Do you want an employee or a leader? If you

want a leader, a leader of what?-

Dogma

Ethical church citizenship

Modern community service

Intra~church sociability

Socio­economic politico action in areas which confront our nation's metropolitan com. munities in which, today, 50% of our con. tinental population now live

Ecumenical politics

11 you want a leader, are the lay church leaders willing to follow his lead, or will they consider the new man as a leader only if he provides a partic. ular type of leadership?

Who or what group is to determine our theology? Is this to be a joint ministerial­layman responsibility ?

CHURCH OBJECTIVES AND PROGRAM

What are the objectives and program specification of our church?

1. Is our church in operation primarily to serve its own church members? How? By whom?

11. What does it conceive its obligation to the people to be, as related to:-

1. Our immediate community? Does this in clude others, not members of our congregation ?

2. The North Shore?

3. The central city and inner city?

4. Metropolitan Chicago?

5. Home evangelism?

6. World evangelism?

In terms of people, what groups are we interested in?What is the nature and degree of our interest? How do we activate and maintain our interest?

111. In terms of categories of challenges, what are our church interests in regard to:-

A. Religious­spiritual issues? What do we mean by these terms? Can they be isolated from other vital challenges?

B. Ethical inter­personal relationships in a com. plex, modern urban society? What and whose ethics are to become the standards for the rest? How? Why ?

There probably is a relationship, alsa, between geographical and mem. bership size and the problems of cammunication and involvement stimulus nf the connrenntion

C. Community organization, group work, social work activities of agencies concerned with the dy. namics of:-

1. Tension in communities in transition ?

2. In migration problems?

3. Vocational orientation, job placement?

4. Inter group living in a common community in terms of cultural, religious, economic and social­family concepts ~

D. I'roductivity aml ethics of county and municipal governmental services, and of those who con. duct the business of governillent?

E. The physically and mentally hamlicapped, and the procrss of:-

1 Identification,

2. Initial help to them and their families,

3. Referral to proper service agencies,

4. Iollow­up guidance and assistance?

F. The emotionally disturbed, and the process of:-

1. Early detection,

2, Initial help to thetn and their families,

3. Referral to proper service agencies,

4. Follow­up guidance and assistance?

C. The convicted and committed person:-

1. Establishment of initial contact,

2. Development of effective inter­personal relationships,

3. I'articipation in rehabilitation,

4. Analysis and improvement of home environment,

5. I'reparation for release,

6. Assistance in return to competitive life,

7. Continued friendship?

I.f. Home and foreign missions.

1. What form of religion do we want to propa6ate ?

2. To whom?

3. Ifow slloul(l our missionary work be accomplished ?

1. Do we wish our cllurch identifie(i buihlings aml our corporate entity to become a focal point for community life for either

1 Our own congregation?

2. Our total community regardless of presence nr ~t..~"r~ nf cllllr~ il nffili~linn~

J. What is included in such an objective in terms ol:-

1. Cultural experience?

2, Post­institutional educational experience?

3. Social problems studies?

4. Social experience?

IV. How does, or should, the Churcil express and implement its defined interest? By:-

1. Civina~ v~rhal encouragement?

2. Crallt of funds?

3. Prayers at appropriate tin~es?

4. Allgmet~tatiorl of need for workers by:-

a. Assiglllll~llt of Church­paid staff?

b. R~cruillnent aml training of potentially ktiowledgeable volunteers from our congregation-from our community non­members?

V. Resources. NVhat resources does the church I~ow have to carry out its present or projected interests, programs and objectives?

A. In terms of finances, what is the opinion with regard to:-

1. Ade~luacy ?

2 Propriety of use allocations.

a. Ilow much of our budget should we spend on ourselves?

On our religious activities?

011 related congregation­centered pro. gratlls ~

b. How much on local non church agent cies?

c. How much on Central City agencies?

d. How much on Metropolitan agencies?

e. How much on client­centered agencies? (. How much on non­client­centered agencies?

g flow much on religious, charitable aml civic algl n( b s ~

3. Does our present butiget aml income meet

our standards? If not, why not? How and who is to be responsible for doing somethim, about the deficiencies, if any?

e. Accountability

f. Independence of action

4. In terms of volume of work, as well as verb ety, can these staff members be reasonably expected to perform satisfactorily the duties assigned? Who is to determine per. formance standards?

VI. Congregate Attitudes.

A. What is the present attitude toward our church? Whose attitude is most valid? Whose atti. tude is most significant? Whose attitude counts- toward:-

1. Church as an agency?

2. Church program?

3. Church lay leadership?

4. Church ministry?

5. Chureh purposes, objectives and techniques?

B. How much is now known about these atti. tudes'J How important is it to know? How does one determine valued attitudes?

With the above as a preface, one would wonder whether the; following steps might not merit con. sideration in laying the groundwork for selection of a new Minister.

1. What are the answers to the foregoing and

3.

1; 4.

i related questions?

2. What are the functions which the new Min. ister will be asked to perform in their order of priority?

Are his job duties properly related to Church program and objectives?

What type of assistance will he need from: a. Paid staff.

b. Church officers and boards. c. The congregation.

And are these enthusiastically willing to

provide it?

5. Is the budget and physical plant sufficient to carry out the plan?

6. What is the Minister's responsibility for fund raising?

~ Based on all of these factors, it would appear desirable to draft a job description for the position of Head Minister which would cover:-

1. Distinguishing features of work. ­ 2. Examples of position duties.

3. Personal attributes desired in selectee.

4. Training and experience background.

5. Special prime qualifications.

9'

days require new images, new obligations require new men, and a new world requires new structures. The Ecumenical Institute seeks to lay a claim upon freely obligated men to pioneer financially with some portion of their benevo. Ient giving by supporting the Ecumenical Institute.

The Ins~itute is totally dependent upon contributed gilts. We must raise the funds to meet an unusually modest budget. Perhaps you already know that the faculty op'`rates in what wc call "the worker­clergy" methotl whereby each person n~akes his own living. This is the arrangement that has been established in ordtr to have an extensive, complete program far in advance of our ability to raise funds for a lull program. In this way, it is possible now to provide the qualitative research and experiment that merits the larger support ultimately anticipated. This is why our present budget is a modest one in the face of operating an extensive program.

It is difficult to suggest an actual amount that we hope you will give. Every ytrson aml group has unique responsibilities to meet and a unique budget of b''~'voltr~ces. What we ask is that you consider the Institute's work among the othtr clui''~s ~'pon you and then commit as much as you can to the Institute on a regular basis. Then, if you are a part of, or know ol. a group that is also lookil~g for a place to lend support, suggest to them that they also may find the Ecul~enical Institute to be a project where their gilt would find strategic use ill service to their unseen neipttbor. Contributions are deductible up to 30% of taxahlc i'~come.

Pleasc receive the cratitude of all who are directly and indirectly connected with thr Institute for your consideration of this work in your giving budget. We hope to hear from you soon, for the need is an urgent one.

-Fred Buss, for the Corporate Office

Chicago Christian Industrial League, Chicago, 111inois

United Churchmen of Illinois Annual Retreat, Lake Bloomington, Illinois

Wilmette Methodist Church, Wilmette, 111.

Evanston Ministerial Association, Evanston, Illinois

Ozona Methodist Church, Ozona, Texas

National Student Association, Columbus, Ohio

Regional Leadersllip Training Conlerence of Northcastern Metbotlist Student

Movement, Painted Post, New York

West Suburban YMCA Clergyl~len's 13reakfast, La Crange, Illinois

13ethany Evangelical and Reforn~ed Churcll, Chicago, Illinois

Central Preshyterian Churclt, Chicago, Illinois

La Grange Presbyterian Church, La Cral~ge, Illinois

Directors of Christian Education Retreat, Presbytery of Clticago

Glenview Community Congregational Church, Clenview, Illinois

Christian Action Council, Synod of Arkansas of the Presbyterian Churclt

The Chicago Presbytery, Chicago, Illinois

College Interns, West Side Christian Parish, Chicago, Illinois

National Student Council of YM­YWCA, Williams Bay, Wisconsin

School of Religion of the Ebenezer Baptist Churcll, Chicago, Illinois

First Presbyterian Church, Evanston, Illinois

Trinity Lutheran Churclt Annual Board Retreat, Evanston, Illinois

Annual Pastors Retreat, Church Federation of Creater Chicago

Conference 'of North Shore Boards of Education, Deerfitld, Illinois

Craduate Student Retreat, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Annual Creater Chicago Youth Rally, Chicago, Illinois

Community of Lay Scholars, Duke University, Durham North Carolina

Southwestern University, Mempltis, Tennessee

Memphis State University, Memphis, Tennessee

Reflections, WBBM Radio, Chicago, Illinois

Good News, WLS Radio, Chicago, Illinois

United Presbyterian Churcll, Winnetka, Illinois

Berwyn Ministerial Association, Berwyn, Illinois

.... Blue Island Ministerial Association, Blue Island, Illinois

Inner City Ministers Association, Chicago, Illinois

Cood Shephertl Community Church, Des Plaines, Illinois

The Chicago loterreligious Delegation to Albany, Ceor~ria

The Chicago Disciples Union of the Christian Churcll, Chicago, Illinois

St. Mark's Episcopal Clturclt, Evanston, Illinois

Youth of La Crange Methodist Church, La Crange, Illinois

Mount Zion Baptist Church, Evanston, Illinois

Annual Meeting of the Semil'ary Faculties of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Since August 1, the Institute has provid`.d interim leaderbbip for the CoodSlteplterd Community Churcll of Des Plaines while the congregation seeks a permanent pastor. Faculty memhers alternate in preaching at the Sunday morning worship service. A leadership training program is conducted by the faculty, using the church as the Northwest Suburban location of the School of Religious St ud ies.

be traveling in Euroye of the meetirlgs scheduled during the present Iquarter: IJlnil Fthlllilly 15, 19G3, tltc last part of thc Craduate School of Ecumenical Studies; February 21­27: First meeting of the Department ~f Studies in Evangelislli; Marcl1 25 30: Collsultation Otl thc relations bet,~ecn Biblc Rcading Notes and Biblical Scholarship. The dirt~ctors at Bossey welcolue inquiries addressed to thr rll abollt these l,lectings .III(i suggestions of pt'lSOllS who might Illake a valtlahle col~triLt~tioll to them. Ill the IJnited Stut~s, .~ddress illquiries to Miss Frances Maeda, U.S. Conferellce for the World Couneil of Churelles, 475 Riverside Drive. New York Citv.

This occasion attracts d(lcgatiol~s frm,~ hul~tlreds of tM~I(IIts and highlights Christian cooperation in Crcater Chicago. Mul2y t hurchcs reserve tables for their delegates. Distinguished speakers such as llellry P. Vall Dusen, Presidellt of Uniorl'I'lleological Scminary, who spok' in 1962, make this affair one of the outstanding times for churcllnlell each y(ar.

This year, the speaker will be J. Irwin Milh l, lay pr~si(lellt of the Natiollal Coulleil of Churclles. The dillller will be hel(l at 6:00 1'.1M1. Fel)ruary 7, ill the Conratl llilton 11otel.

Willialll R. Cozart of the Illstitut~ faculty is ulso al1 blstllletor in Englisl1 at Mlludeleill College in Chicago. Ile was ree~ntly seLctttl us u mclllLcr of the Society for Rtligio'1 ill 11igh(r Educution. The Society, newly cstublishetl under the sponsorship of the Danforth Foumlatioll, is a Illerger btn`'`ul the Fcllows of the fomler National Couneil 011 R`ligioll h1 11igher F.ducatioll and the Danforth Teaching Fcllows. It is (olllposed of 800 faculty ~I)(~l)b(rs presently serving in 250 colleg~s, universities, and th~ological selllillari~s ucrojs the country.

The Institute faculty receives r( ~lut.sts for spr ilkhlg ~.l~gurt~l)lt~nts, series of lectures, aml supplying pulpits, and wili sche(lule yalticiputiol1 for groups of all types when time is available to do so. Whtn rlqucstillg u sp'~aker, please indicate the anticipated date or cat's, thlle, locatioll, llallle of group, supporting organization, approximate nulllLcr of plrsolli (xp((ted n' y;ll­ti~ ipate, the sub ject matter you wish to be dealt with, alla tht tilllt. lill~its t~f filch cngagelllcnt. If you prefer a particular sp~ak~r, the faculty will try to assigll hilll to fulfill your request. If he is not available at the proyost(l ti(l~(, the factllty will pro vice another member if you wish. T be honorilrinlll requeste(l is whatever the group normally provides. Tlte amount of the hollorariulll ill no ~vay affects the decision of the faculty to assign its mcmljers to an ~ ngagelllent. Monies derived from honoraria are a source of support of the corporatn filculty.

ically a'',o'~g hi~ s,~rro~dings u~lconscious of th'ir si,mificance unaware of the forms thro'~gh v.­hich the past is minisl' ring to him. Ilow then can the ity beco'lle alive to its inhabitants; how can it address each subway­cotilmuter with ren~inders of th~ dignity of human life and of Ihc un~epeatable uniqueness of hi.i own''

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SCHOO~ ..­ ~t~

OF ~1l~,

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A Iwenhe~h cen~ury opprooch ~o

~he proctiCol ~heologicol educo

~ion of ~he o'ren~ive loymon ~o

word ~he renewal of Ihe Chu`ch

~hrough ~he developmen' of ~he

effec~ive minis~ry or ~he lofty in

con~emporrory socie~y.

,

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th' tai',; t,f th~; .'ilit!; t`~ inc~hit the liEc­~,ithig tn~iron,~tnt in ~vhici the dreams and crtativ' energies of its cilizens car~ at last fi~d conerele ~hape and reality.

It is a long ~vay from the city of nefs to the museum city of the living memories of humanity. I:ut the blueprints err drawn. I.if' is waiting. And the city of thc future has its mission.

~Y PROGRAMS ~UNCHED ACROSS CHICAGO AREA

From October to December laymen from church congregations throughout the metropolitan Chicago area were engaged in a new venture: beginning their own serious theological education in depth. From across the various sections of the city anrl suburbs they came to eight strategically selected centers where the Ecumenical Institute in cooperation wilh local congregations councils of churches ecumenical ministries and other community organizations launched the fall term of the School of Religious Sturlies.

It was tite third such annual school to bc comit~cted by the Institute the first to be "mobilized." The mobilizalion had been made possible by securing a permanent faculty large enough to make such a sweep across the city.

The fall courses involved part of an extensive cur. riculum developed by the faculty over a period of six years. The initial course is in the area of contemporary religious thought. It examines the ways in whiel1 the problem of human living is raised for the indivitinal in tite modern world and involves an analysis of the relevance of the pri~llary concepts of '',an's religious heritage und the possihililies for new slyles of life for twenlietit eeniury man. The entire school of which the first course is a prerequisite is a r'sult of ir~tensive researcit to discover new ways and n~eans for effective trai~ling of laymen for the fullillmcut of th'ir OliYYiOII as the Church in th' worbl.

I.ocations in Chica_o proper were Lincoll1 I'ark East (;arfield l'ark F.nglewoocl Norwood l'ark Near NV, st .Shle and Woodlawn. Surburban prograllls were b'hl in Des Plaines and Evanston.

l'he courses are highly practical geared to a depth und'rstanding of the faitil life history and ''fission of thl (.bilrcil: and of thc art science and social

s:ructurcs of society today.

The second quarler beginning this month will see a repeat of the same courses for persons who have not yet participated. In addilioll to the eight week school conducte(l in eight locations four advanced courses will be offered.

SVorkirlg in cooperation v.­itl1 churcit congregations the School aids in training effective leadership among tile laity providing the ~leans through which they may oround their religious rcRection in tite mainstrl~am of Christian thought for the sake of grasping the role alid ~lli``iO'I of Ibe local congregation in tite soth~ly ahout il.

TVhelher inside or outsid( the fold of the Church the School is also of ser~ ice to the sentinel individual the cosmopolitan human being who today is strilgglillg to gracp the meaning of genuine involve~llent in his fallliiy life Itis vocation civic milieu, and the worbl iYYII(Y that co~n''land his attention. The courses pro~ hit such a p' rcon the opportunity to gaill a pl~rsp'cti\e 1vhh ll will enable him to orient his ilin~r life a~,d stru'ggb to the enitural wisdom of lle world ill whicil vc li~e.

Iiy exploring tile significacee of religion in aml for every diml nsion of hill~lan history tile School is a vi nturl tov ard llnd~ rYt~l~dillg tbe emerging new worbl aml the rthvaner~ of the Churcl1 to the social i`~ll's and probb llls of our eity nation and world.

Tllt' School iY I h' r' for' (b ii gnl d for I hc awakl ned lay''lall in t~l ry walk of life of all i''teresis concerl`s and p'.rYuasionc' v. bo desires to engage in dialo_~l(~ wilb others aboul wliat it ~l~eans to bc a blll)~a~l btil~g and a ehllr~lian in our day

Applicatio~l for Ih' courses beginning this month are ~v~leolll(~. Furtil~'r inforll~ation about the locations and tillll`s niay be obtained by calling or writing the

11 i'lstilule.

1

I NTROSPECTION I N

A LOCAL CHURCH

In selecting a new minister, a local congregation questions itself in a mul titude of relationships for the sahe of fresh understanding of its role and mis sion in society, and produces an amazing chech list of concerns.

By KENDALL 1. LINGLE tull time Yolunteer in urban fire dynamics

The increasingly rapid change in the complexion and composition of metro

IN increasingly rapid change in the complexion and composition of

politan communities has, in recent years, become a major concern of those interested in urban life problems. It is said that 8or/~' of the population of the continental United States will live in urban concentrations by 1980. This population mobility not only involves more rural and small town resffients moving to the Big City and its suburbs, it also means rapffl shifts in population within the metropolis and traumatic changes in thc personalities of tite communities which make up the metropolis.

It is desirable for all of the social, cultural, economic and political forces of .a metropolis to review the impact which these dramatic changes will have upon the activities of such groups, and to attempt to project the changes that prob" ably will occur with respect to tite interrelationship of tllese groups to each other. One of the potentially constructive forces within the new `lletropolis should be its churches.

For the churches, however, to undertake effectively the new roles which are available to them, it would appear desirable for the church, and for the indi. vidual congregation of the respective churches, to do some introspection as to what role they would like to have their church play in the freedom enterprise system of our country and most particularly in thc geographical co'~munity area of the central city and metropolis of which it is a part. Such introspection not only involves a study of programming but a review of the inter personal and inter functional relationships of the various components of a church to teach other.

Recently a long­established church of our con~munity was faced with thc retirement of its Senior Minister, a highly regarded pastor with deep and effective roots not only within his congregation, but witllill the collllllullity of which it was a part. The congregation was faced with the selection of a minister to replace him.

As a part of the process of selecting a new minist~r it seemed desirable to suggest that the congregation and its Board and oilicers (probably joilltly with the ministers from whom they planned to make a selection) could perform a constructive service if they were provided with a checklist of sollle of the nlajor items to be considered to determine what they believed the attitudes and the aspirations of the church were to be to meet the dynanlics of social organizatiott and need in mid century.

For this purpose the following checklist of topics for discussion was presented, and it was suggested that it might be desirable to establisit and to select a group of laymen from the church congregation to be thc key group for the study of these matters together with, if possible, the dl velopl)l~ llt of group discussions of the most salient of the items, so that all metubers of the congre.

It has been suggested that the list of items might be significant to others, and for titis reason it is presented in the manner in which it was originally designed.

Some of the questions would appear significant only when a congregation is facet) with tile necessity of selecting a new minister. Yet, if one thinks about th' question of the working relationship between the ministers and other professionals with the laynlen of the congregation, it is believed that one will discover tllLlt even were the question of selection of a new minister not involved it would be desiralJle, from tinle to time, to review tite functions of the minis. serial and other professional staff of the church, the functions, responsibility and authority of the respective standing Boards of the churcit, and the role of the merllb rs of the congregation in maintaining a viahle, dynamic, social institution in th', guise of the church not only to advance the kingdom of God but to relate thc kill,, lom to thc practical problems of individuals and groups in a Socim y which bccollles increasingly more complex, more interdependent upon social, political, economic, cultural and religious institutions, and more vital in terms of the preservation of the system of freedoms whicil we have inherited in this country, and which we can lose unless we utilize them to meet the practical chair l~glS col~lrol~ting our sochny.

We live in a highly dynamic society in which each enterprise is increas. ingly challengod to look critically at itself and ta make such changes as are necessary to meet the campetitian far the affiliation, participation, membership and financial support of the community.

Generically, churches have last their leadership role in community life in the past five centuries by nat keeping abreast of man s knowledge and everincreasing concern far newly­identified or popularized challenges affecting him as an individual or a social being.

Demands far man s interest have become mare numerous and complex as special agencies have been established to act on unmet needs ignored ar ineffectively served by existing agencies. He is, therefore, less churched

church centered or church related, partially for this reason, and partially because church techniques seem incompatible with value standards used to determine the worthwhileness of an agency.

In same cases at least, the dichotomy which exists between the church role cancepts of the ministerial staff and that of lay church leadership would appear to make all ineffective in maintaining member interest.

Contintued Jrom Preceding Pa&e

THE DUTY AND THE BEAST

It is no wonder that the novel should appeal to the youth of the 1960s, for the island world of the Englisit school boys is Holclen's dream collle true. There are no phony adults against WhOIll to rebel. Tltc entire population of the island consists of children about Phoebe's age. Had he bt ell among those marooned on the island, Holden would not have had to dream of going west. He would have already been there.

For students who had built upon the image that llolrlen had proj~cted, Lord of the Flies was exactly the book needed when they hacl pushed that illlage as far as it would go. The "Holder" who reads Golding's book is 1iving in a different era than did the "Tlollow Man" who first found The Catcher ;n the Rye.

If Lord of the Flies were assigned reading outside the Englisit department, it would most likely be in social studies. Young people who have discovered that the answer to their problems lies, not only within themselves, but in the societj in which they live, turn to a discipline that seeks to understand and develop remedies for what is understood. Standing on the shouhlcrs of llolclen Caulfield, they are beginning to look outward to change thc world, even to save it.

Unlike Holden, only one of the characters in Lord of the Flies lives a private life, and even Simon finally does not follow Holden's lead. For most of the boys, all answers come from the outside: the Beast, unknown and unseen in the darkness, in Jack's case; rescue from the sea in Ralpit~s Simon appears to be the only exception. He alone recognizes titat the Beast exists only as the Itoys allow him to exist, that he exists within them. But even Simon's ultimate solution comes to him from the outside. It does not come in his mystical encounter with tite Lord of the Flies. It comes in the hard reality of the dead airman on the mount a in.

Lionel Trilling has noted of l.ord of the F/ies that "its sllbj( ct amollllts to an affirmation of, exactly, Original Sin." Donahl J. Hcnahan wrote that (;oblillg "seems to believe in tite essential depravity of man," a position with which E. L.

· Epstein concurs: "The tenets of civilization, the mora1 and social codes, the Ego, the intelligence itself, fornl only a veneer over this white hot power ["site anarchic, amoral, driving Id"], this uncontrollable force."

Each of these statelllents reflect a misreading front the vantage point of the mass of young readers who today find it to be a symbolic justification for titcir drive to attach themselves to a cause. Few are existentially concerned about Original Sin. Many, however, arc deeply COllCC rn' d ''bout whlrc they ll~ay uttach themselves in this world. When this question is hrollgllt to a reading of Colding's novel, the book is readily seen to provide specific answers, answers that are embodied in the opposing figllres of Ralph and Jack, symbols for two en~ tirely dirferent stances in life.

Trilling is right when he suggests that the novel deals with Original Sin, but it is Original Sin that must be understood in a very precise sense. In the im mediate mood of the past, original sin was the fate of a viewpoint. Now, it is depicted in Lord of the Flies, as a decision, an act of the will. It is the choice on the part of Jack and the "savages" to subjugate themselves to the Beast, and in so doing literally to sacrifice their own identity. Ralph is no less tempted to serve the Beast than Jack is. In fact, Ite and Piggy actually participate in

Ralpil insists that the boys assume individual responsibility for their life on the island and their rescue from it, but the tribe cannot bear to face the terrors of being alone. Slowly, then, we begin to see that the reader who identifies with Ralpll is not the Big Man On Campus who is as nr.ucll a member of the herd as anyone else, but is the "lonely indisidual." Few of them are about today. Consequently, the number of readers who genuinely identify with Ralph is cer. tain to be small, althougil the number who would like so to identify is con. siclerably larger, if for no other reason than that they cannot face what in titemselves would suggest that they are travelling the avenue that leads to Jack's extreme position.

Jack is tite reason Lord of the F/ies is currently popular. He and his 1962 followers know they cannot stancl the isolation of llolden's world, but neither can they bear to face the responsihilities of the world about them. Jack's way of escape really is quite similar to the way in which young people actually act, whether in the slum, the midcile­class neighborilood, or the university campus. A fine way to escape responsibility is through group anonymity and power.

Interestingly enough, few young people today want to be identified at either of these extremes. They do not want to be thought "do­gooders," but neither do they wish to be known as "beatniks." They wish, more than anything else, to he allonylllous, unseen by anyone. At the same time, however, they want to make a significant contribution to the world about them. They really want to be "catchers in the rye." Since it is, of course, impossible to be anonymous as an incliviclual, they tend to become an inclistinguishable part of a distinguishable group, thus hoping to make their contribution without the personal risk of failure or public censure.

The failure of Ralph's conch to hold his group together is contrasted with the success of Jack's paintecl masks. The masks hide the identity of the boys, not ollly from each other, but from themselves. Wearing them, they are no 1c,~lg~r Juck or Roger or Rolic~rt. lhey are "the tribe." As the tribe, they devilop their own new icientity, complete with its policy ancl ritual. All Ralph has is his beautiful conch and his vulneralrility as an incliviclual.

For readers who identify with Jack, the book also brings to focus 10ngings for comlllunity that are the 10gica1 result of a period of intense internal existence. The very fact that these longings can now be focused at all suggests that Colcling's hook may mark an end to the dominance of escape motives and groupiness for the sake of hiding from 1ife.

Just as The Catcher irl the Rre producecl a figure, which, when elllbodie(l filily ill its readers, rescHtecl in a rilood ancl symbolic form exactly opposite from what those rc aclers initially founcl in it, so perhaps, readers of Lord of the Flies fincl the hook appealing because it catches a fu11y developeci mood that is even now in its death throes. If this is the case, then perhaps Ralph will actua11y turn out to be its most important character after, all, for he provicles an image of responsibility which could very well cause the book's popularity to extencl beyond the initial infatuation with Jack. Maybe the time is close when young people will be willing to stand out from their peers, willing to take the risks involved in being alone. Maybe Jack is just too much.

If this conjecture is false, therl we may expect to see youthful gangs increase in number and destructiveness, ancl oicler gangs set out to destroy the world.

THE DUTY AND

THE BEAST

The college campus, long recognized as a barometer of the mood of a time,

TH college campus, long recognized as a barometer of the mood of a

is once again providing evidence that a change in our culture's mind­set is occurring. Among the novels that now engage the attention of students is Lord of the Flies, a book that was singularly unsuccessful when it first appeared here in 1955. William Colding's tale of English school boys marooned on ta Pacific island without adult supervision is receiving the same kind of popular readership that The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger's account of n New England school boy wandering through New York City in flight from the "phony" world about him, has long enjoyed on the campus. This alteration in the reading of our younger citizens may give some clue to the literature of the time to follow, as well as to the mood that will produce it.

Robert Penn Warren wrote recently that "Fiction, by seizing on certain ele meets in its time and imaginatively pursuing them with the unswerving logic of projected enactment, may prophesy the next age . . .we turn to fiction of our own time to help us envisage the time to come and our relation to it."

He suggested that his point is borne out by looking at books in the past that obviously have been forerunners of the age to come. As examples he cited Theodore Dreiser's An American Tra&edy and Flaubert's Madame BotJary. Others could be mentioned. Among them certainly would be F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Creat Gatsby and T. S. Eliot's The Hollow Men, both of which appeared in the same year as An American Tra&edy-1925.

These books, written in the decade following the first world war, again achieved wide­spread readership in the decade after the second world war, when poems such as The iVaste Land caught the emptiness of a time in which the last vestige of idealism and hope for a progressively enlighlened mankind had been washed away in a nood of blood.

The publication date of these books was unimportant to this second post­war generation. They only knew that they were happy such works were there when they needed them, giving symbolic form to the bottomless pit of life's chaos. The ironic twist in much of this literature was, of course, not perceived. Wltat was found was the obvious: life is meaningless and hollow. Now they were able to say so.

Then, about 1955, a change began to take place in the reading habits of the college student. English instructors began to be aware that their students were avidly pouring over a slim volume called The Catcher in the Rye, almost ignoring F. Scott Fitzgerald and T. S. Eliot, whose works had been assigned in class, and soon Salinger's book took its own place on the reading lists these professors

Furthermore, the solitary reader knew that he could not share his inner symbolic world with others. He knew that the recording Holden had bought for his sister Phoebe had to be broken. The meaning of life could not be passed to anyone else, no matter how close that person might be. Life was a matter to be worked out alone. The fact cannot be overlooked, however, that all who lived it earnestly desired to share that internal life and its meaning. The image that provided the title for Salinger's book gives ample evidence of Holden's compulsion to share. Not only was Ite concerned to escape from the phony world but he wanted to take others with him. He wanted to be the "catcher in the rye" who woubl catch small children as they fell off the cliff into the nothingness of the pltony world. In other worcls, llohlen knew where he stood. He didn't like where he was, but at least he knew. This was a great clear more than the former generation hatl possessed, and yoilng readers found in it the answer to an unfocused restlessness.

SVith The Catclter in the Rye, therefore, a botton1 to life's void had appeared. It was a confusecl and tenuous botton1,~but it was a bottom nevertheless, offering the Itope that by internal courage antl~private symbol system it was possible to live significantly.

Just as the immediate post­war generation failed to u~nderstand the irony in Eliot's verse, so the gemration of the fifties failecl to see the seecls of the coming mood in Salinger's novel. So~l~eti~les it scemecl as though students who found llolclen to be their prime meaningful symbol never reacl past the middle of the book; the role of Pllotbe WAS oftell overlooked. Hohlen's sister represents the idealistic youth, the unsullitd innoeenee that llolclen longs for, but she lives in th( pllony worlcl without b~ ill,, phony. It is l'hoebe who finally lets llolden know that he cannot collti~llle to r~lll away fron1 his life as he wanted to do. She does this not by giVillg hirll a hcture as the history teach'`r at 1'ency had doll(, but hy sill~ply mukir~g ehar th' illlpraetirality of his trip west hy presenting hers~lf as his colllpunioll. Whell offered the actual possibility of hCillg the "eateher in the rye," llolclen could not be it.

Mr. Antolini, the only illstlllctor llohlen eoulcl respect, puts into formal speech the moocl of the literature to come:

This fall [he says1 I thinl; you're riding for-it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to Jeel or hear himself hit bottom. He jlrst keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some tinle or other in their lives, were looking for somethirl& their own erlvironment cotrldn't supply them with. Or they thought their ouan environn~ent couldrl't supply them with. So they gave up looking.

GOLDING MAY SIGNAL AN ERA OF A NEW

COMMANDING LITERATURE

· By ALLAN BROCKWAY for the Corporate Office

to his relationships, in order to hold in his consciousness what it means in his generation to be a man. The form of an image thus created not only points to the content of the task to be performed, but also offers enabling power. Holding together the indicative and the imperative in this paradoxical unity, the image ministers to the human spirit which finally finds edification only in the decisive actualization of a real possibility.

Thus the decisive factor: that the arena of time and space is not fulfilled and completed simply because man is. Neither is this accomplished by the particular and historic yearning of the aforementioned human spirit. For this yearning is tragically doomed to incompletion by the mere fact that its deep desire is to exit from its own particularity. Therefore each generation must be reminded: a man cannot live here and also there. If he chooses to live here, there follows with that decision a cer. tain configuration of relationships, of people and circumstances, to which he must submit himself-if he is to live. "Submittin`:" in this instance means not only willful obedience, but also joyous participation. How, then, shall one obediently participate in his own particular destination? A man is born, aml then, one day later, so to speak, a question comes to him: shall he live or die? (This usually occurs when he discovers that he cannot live both here and there.) If now he chooses to live, how, in what manner, can he proceed? Will he live for himself? Unless his choice was an unserious one, he cannot do this. Living for himself is an abstraction, an unreality, no matter how cleverly the opportunity presents itself. A man's self can only be found and realized in a social context, that is in relation with other selves. Well then, he can live for them. But is not this also an impossibility, a game like blindman's buff, to live for other people? Can a man live for his family or even only for a friend? Saying yes will imply that his manner of living will be to assist others in their living. But only the intrusion of the eternal, the enabled actualization of his imperative, assists a man in his living. Will he, like the Grand Inquisitor, seek to meet the needs of the human spirit by serving people with food and clothing and kindly smiles? Will he secure for them structures of justice? What will he do if they need more than these (and what man on earth does not need eternally more) ? What about the man himself ? While he is assisting others, who will assist him? Who reminds him of his decision to be alive and what it means? No, none of this will do. A man does not receive his life as a gift from himself or from the particular set of relationships in which he finds himself. His life is a gift bestowed by the imperative which has become his imperative. If he is to realize his life, if he is to obediently fill full his unique destiny, he must be a man among men (not alone); he must get for himself twelve disciples, so to speak, a community of men who will one thing: to live in their chosen time and space, fulfilling and com. pleting it, to live not for themselves or for the sake of other people, but on behalf of all men everywhere and throughout history as this humanity is represented and localized in the particular time and space. All of which is to say that Christian man always understands himself as a participant, not abstractly, but concretely, in the communion of Saints. Thus the arena is filled full and completed by singleness of mind, by dedication of heart, by labor of body. Fulfillment and completion is the task, and it is always found clothed in the garments of its peculiar time

was to be any certainty in life a man would have to be his own authority by means of his own decisiveness.

But now is another time and space which is demanding a different labor and a new kind of man. Intrusive events have opened up fresh new areas of the unknown and man has again come upon his curiosity. Never before has time and space been so unlimited as to include the entire world. Never has it been so clear that humanity lives or perishes together. The demand, the task, is the same: fulfillment and completion the new heaven and the new earth. But the difference is that the pilgrim has come home. The outsider of another day has discovered that if he is to live and be task, he must be inside. He could not have returned had not the generation previous prepared the way for him, but that task is completed. Jacob's struggle with the angel is over. He has been called by name; he has been blessed as a man. The only task remaining, the next demand, is to rise up from the ground and re­enter the land of his brother. To be cynical, to be outside, would be an easy answer now and no task at all. Merely to observe and point out the uncertainty and ambiguity of this time and space would be escapism. No, the task of this generation demands the unambiguous, the decision, the resolve to make history; it demands visions and ideas, clarity and precision, a ret union of the world of trees and Rowers aml all of nature with the world of man, a new relationship between the known and the unknown, a new thrust which dares to take account of the future.

Abraham Itas traveled to Moriah and now journeys home. Isaac, the sacrifice, Itas been returned: a free gift. But how does a father live with such a reminder in his presence? With what kind of significance does a mart finish out his days when he Itas come so close to the edge of the abyss? The task requires a man who walks uprightly in the midst of the complexity which characterizes his time, a man of knowledge and skill, a man who has bathed in the finitude of human existence and has emerged by choice, not chance, a fully haman being. Such a man knows that life is daily or not at all; he knows pain and joy and sorrow and anticipation. But he also knows that none of these is his life. His life is a vocation, a task, a sanctification which moves about with singleness and dedication and labor. His life is a demand which proclaims the possibility of being whole and in love and at peace in a time and space which knows too well that this is an imperative and not a conclusion drawn from the nature of things.

The pilgrim has returnecl and found that his world has been recreated, a world which has a new song to sing about the earthly concerns of justice and politics aml world peace and hllllla~l dignity, a world which is full and riclt with living tin~e aml breathing space. The city of Cod is no longer just over the next hill. Man need not search for it today. llc need only stand upright and walk. To be sure, such a,man experiences knees which want to beml down and hands which petition for help. He remains upright and walking not in order to prove he can, but in order to accomplish fulfillment and completion. His source of courage is analogous to that of a tree or a flower which for its time and space repetitiously stands secretly and Illysteriously nourished for its task of continuously becoming itself. The answer to his petition, Itis peace which is beyond comprehension, is the greatness of spirit which comes not quantitatively but rather as a new quality as he labors sacramentally on

The dream of heaven on earth has been one of the fervent longings

Th dream of heaven on earth has been one of the fervent

of man since the dawn of history-and the occasion of his deepest suilering as this longing eternally encounters frustration. Continuously man is busy anticipating a time and space in which his living will be somehow more significant, more united with the forces, drives, and complexities of history, or he is actively resigning himself to the sell­imposed exigencies of his particular location in history. These are the classic human tendencies, described through the ages, repeatedly exposed, painted, set to music or poetry by men of all kinds. It is the classic experience, however, that anticipating man always finds himself, nonethe. less, in a particular time and space and that resigning man never finally succeeds in protecting himself from intrusions into the privacy of his private world. Now, in the present age, as throughout history, this experience points to the sharpest tragedy which a man inflicts upon himself, that in naivete or desperation he rejects the power of life which is uniquely and particularly his. Christian man, when he is true to his historic task, has always addressed himself to this fundamental human tragedy. In this generation he is not excepted from his obligation. He m,,ct ancw~r nvAin whn mAn is An(l how he mi~ht walk.

On the surface this task appears to be an easy one. The difficulty, however, appears in the actualization. For each generation must formu late its answer within the context of the relativities of time and space, historical ambiguity and uncertainty and human ambivalence. This makes the business of answer formulation difficult enough, but always added to it is the classic difficulty: the aforementioned tragic tendency within a man to wish himself out of his human situation either by reworking his image of himself or by delimiting his vision of the world with, in either case, the resulting inclination to see his task as helping others wish his wish. Christianly understood, the task has another goal: not helping a man out of his human situation, which is impossible anyway, but rather enabling him by direct address and power filled intrusion to reunite his living with his own separate destiny and the destiny of humanity as a whole in the particular historical arena of which he happens to be a part.

As for the present age­there appears to be arising here and there a mood of exasperation with the habits of mind ancl thougllt­putterns currently in vogue, albeit in the recent past these have succeeded in enabling men to transcend their parochialisms and to transform new potent

IGHTLY

Christian man is always man in community. In community he is always

Thedream man is always man in community. In community he is

priest and yet participant, he is prophet and yet only one in the gathered crowd, he is teacher and yet student, he is a new creation and yet he lives as anY man within the structures of history. In community Christian man remembers that no matter who the man or what the time and space, life is filled full and completed. For pagan man, the man of land and country, the remembrance becomes merely an idea which either is received as a soothing balm for the sharp winds of history or is des perately blocked because the uncertainties and injustices of life cry that it is a lie. Christian man, however, sees and hears tjhe concrete life opportunity in the proclamation of fulfilled time and completed space. This message is not the easy optimism of the positive thinking religionist whose aim is to reduce life ancl simplify away its sharp edges, nor has it anytlling to do with the easy pessimism of the sophisticate who cannot or will not see that his tillle and space are foreshortenecl and his lucidity earthbound and frozen. The Christian difference is that the message, the remembrance, is the starting point for life, not a summation or conclusion; a way to move, not a turning inward; a becoming history, not a withdrawing from something viewed as external process; the remembrance is the imperalivc, it is the eternal entering into and therefore

~c~cal~ tIlO ,ua~

Unlike pagan man, Christian man's task is not to improve his golf game or to increase his income or to gain respect and reputation or even to love ancl serve his fellow man by doing good, despite the fact that he is likely to bc found participating in any or all of these as relative goals. The task of Christian man, his single purpose wherever he finds himself is to fulfill time and complete space; his task is to labor unceasingly toward actualizing as history the new heaven and the new earth. The relevant categories here, the road markers, so to speak, are time and space, not process and progression. For the arena in which the labor is accomplished is not determined by humanly viewed progressive improvement, which manner of viewing has a proclivity toward blindness. Rather it is determined objectively by time aml space, the relative and 3­dimen. signal human complex in which all men find themselves. It is here, spatially, and now, timely, that the new heaven and the new earth is to be brought into being because as concrete life opportunity it is here and now that the new heaven ancl the new earth is first encountered. There fore the task of Christian man is not to find the new heaven and the nlw earth, for it is already given. Ile is rather to actualize it, to engage himself Itabitually in rc petition, continuously bringing into being what i9 already present,

IMAGING A MISSIONAL THEOLOGY

BY DON WARREN FOR THE CORPORATE OFFICE

1

SLICKER: Someone nas labeled Chicago "the world­city. What this means to me is that history wouldn't be history without Chicago. And unless I know that, I cannot be a world­wide citizen. But if, as a citizen, I see Chicago as the world city, I can then see myself as a world citizen.

MCCLESKEY: I want to say "yes" to that, yet when I hear such talk, about a world city and historical significance, I fear we are treading close to the romantic. It sounds good, but can the man tending his drug store in Norwood Park really get hold of, or imagine, Chicago in this way?

' WARREN: I think this concern is certainly justified and I share it, but I think what is needed here is more of a warning than anything else. First of all, as I understood them, Mr. Cozart and Mr. Slicker are not suggesting that the images we are calling for would be some sort of an answer that would suddenly make life simple, or that the perplexities and sorrows and frustrations of life would disappear. Not that, at all. The image rather offers a significant context in which the problems and tensions of life can be meaningfully struggled with. Secondly, it may have sounded as if it was being suggested that we already possess these visions full blown. But the point is that we are in need of them. Our task is to begin to dare to forge thenu

PtEacE: I think we had better pause here for some kind of summary. Are we saying something like this: Every person must have some awareness of being related to the universal which is to possess some sense of comprehensive significance in history, before he can really participate in the actual given task of his daily life and thereby live meaningfully; and that we must create images capable of communicating this to the twentieth century man if he is to overcome this aggravating immobility that is his spiritual malaise, so to say?

MATHEWS: Indeed. Man can grasp his life only if he has a sense of being and participating in history, but he needs n kind of middle agent here. This is the larger immediate community of which he. is a part. Only if he car; appropriate an image of his relation to, say, Chicago or Mid America or to his nation as a significant historical factor can he capture a vision of his own significance in history. Of course, the same would be true, as we now see it, of any other time and place.

SLICKER: I think we must be careful at this point. This places an overwhelming burden on that waitress or on a sheepherder, or any other person, unless he is given tools to get at this problem.

PIERCE: I think Mr. Slicker is right. How does a person get such transcendent­concrete images. Where does this man on the Michigan Avenues of the world get his picture? Is this the task of the Church? Is the Church doing this? Or should the Church be doing this?

MATIIEWS: I think this is the role of the Churclt. If some would

to be added, namely the lay movement which in its very essence is a manifestation of the Church's renewed concern for the world we live in, and for the particular problems that men and societies in that world experience.

PIEPCE: Are you suggesting that the role of the Church is that of an "image factory" in the sense that we have been speaking, and that the Church has become or is becoming aware of this role in our time?

SLICKER: Yes, something like that.

PIERCE: But how does this bear on the problem of lay theoo logical education?

COZART: Isn't it the real clue to such education? I mean the fact that the Church, so to speak, has rediscovered the world- perhaps in a depth and insight and intensity that she has never possessed before.

PIERCE: You'll have to spell this out for me more specifically.

COZART: Well, the first task in theological education is to com. municate the comprehensive image we discussed earlier: that the transcendent word today is that man is absolutely welcome into the universe as a human being, that this world is his home, and that he has a mission in this world to be involved in the great human adventure of civilization, that his work, whatever it is­- driving a bus, managing a drug store-has cosmic significance.

MCCLESKEY: Certainly the beginning of theological education is the articulation of the transcendent image. But another and inseparable facet of such education is knowledge of the world. The layman must know his world, his nation, his city, his community . . . his Hyde Park; and this knowledge is neither unrelated "facts" nor abstract conceptions, but rather practical and concrete images which issue in creative action.

SLICKER: The two are certainly inseparable. And I would like to emphasize that the concern throughout is to enable the layman to do his own imaging. Such training is for the sake of releasing him to do his own theologizing in dialogue both with his past tradition and his present world through which he forges his own images of responsible personal and social involvement, in every aspect of 09 day to day life.

WARREN: That gets to the heart of the matter for me. The aim of theological education for the laity is to enable him to be in volved in the world with lucidity and passion . . . involved erect. tively and sacrificially on behalf of civilization . . . in the eom munity, the city, the nation, and the families of man. The images are to this end, and herein lies the "cure" for the present malaise of the man on Michigan Avenue.

THE URBAN IMAGE CONSCI

USNESS

and lay theolonical education

PIERCE: The Ecumenical Institute, of which this group arounc the table is the faculty and dean, is a research and educationa center doing research into the practical ways and means of pro viding ecumenical theological education for laymen on behalf o local congregations of all denominations. Centlemen, the topic o our discussion is directly related to the role of the Ecumenica Institute: "The Contemporary Church and Lay Theological Edu cation." Mr. Mathews, why don't you begin?

MATHEWS: I would have to begin by insisting that the tlleo logical education of the laity must be a very concrete endeavor It is not a matter of transmitting abstract formulae. The whole consideration must start with the way a man walking down Mich igan Avenue today feels after what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century. It's just that concrete.

PIERCE: Then let's begin there: How does this man walkinp down Michigan Avenue in 1962 sense after his interior life?

COZART: For one thing, life no longer feels to him as it has fot the past twenty years. I sometimes think that, for several decades man has felt like a patient stretched out on an operating tabic while the scalpels of depth psychology, modern art, and popular philosophy disclosed his inner chambers of horrors. Man nc longer senses himself this way. Ile has gotten up off that table Now he sits so to speak, in his living room with his television on one hand ancl his pocket­book library on the other, where the twenty­seven inch picture and the miniature page bombard him with all kinds of images of being human. V/estern teleplays about his American heritage, classical dramas from the memory of West ern Civilization, contemporary science fiction, modern love and hero stories, daily news analyses, documentaries, panel discussions -all confront him with ways of being a man. Ilis problem is that he's overwhelmed by the multiplicity of possibilities! He's pare lyzecd before the necessity of chosi226 among them a real live option for his life.

SLICKER: Your figure of bombardment is a good one, but man today is not only bombarded by possible styles for living his life, he is also bombarded by specific demands on his life. It's as if he is walking on a treadmill through a hail storm, ceaselessly pounded by a multitude of demands: the demands of family, the clemancis of neighborhood, demands of work, demands of state, demands of church, demands of other nations, economic demands, educational demands, social demands, and on and on. These are no longer just boring inescapables for him. He sees their significance and

Transcript of a television discussion by the faculty

MATHEW: Though much more needs to be said, Mr. Pierce, all this points to what I meant when I said that theological education must be concrete. It must begin just where the spiritual problem of man manifests itself in a given time and place.

PIERCE: I would like to ask now, how one goes about speaking to such a man? ~lhat is to be said to him? ~/hat is it he needs?

MCCLESKEY: In turning to this, let's not forget that man's ques tions are, in a way, the 'very stuff that give him his answers. Becoming clear about our deepest concerns is the first step toward any solution. And, assisting others toward such clarity is therefore the first step in speaking to them.

WARREN: Precisely. Maybe this is saying the same thing, but we must make it clear that whatever living is going to go on, is going to go on right in the midst of these co2nplexities that characterize our times and the problems of our lives. It is a com'~lon intuition of our age, even though we need to be reminded of it over and again, that living is a present reality, not 90211C postponed possibility in the future. It is founcl only in the situation at hand, not in some imagined or hoped for set of circumstances.

I'IFIICE: So we must enable the man on Michigan Avenue to be sensitive in depth to his situation, and sonichow help him to see that the answer is to be found in the present col)lplex in which he fincis himself. Now, is this all? Doesn't he need to hear something else?

iVAnnEN: NVell, for me, the heart of thc 222~2tter is that man today needs images: practical, specific, personal images. Call them visions or relationships, if you wish. These he must have if he is to overcome his inertia in the face of the boml)ardment of possihilities and demamis we spoke of. We 2)ee<1 all kinds of fresh visions today-of what it n)cans, in the twentieth ccl)tury, to be an individual, to be a friend, to be a family, a ColilillU2lity, a city, a nation. These must be highly specific and concrete. At the same time, they must capture and dramatize for man, universal significance. We need the kind of relational pictures whic12 offer a sense that ev. 2y pa'­2icular act participates in total history-that is, in the transcendent. Only with the aid of such i211ages ean man overcome his inertia aml risk the plunge into life ahout him. And only in such a plunge, can he be truly human and find real meanin" and life.

-An outgrowth of the Second Assembly prepares for expanded practical research in the coming new era of the Church.

AT A FOt'nTEEN HOTIR SESSION last month, a group of some twenty clergymen

- A FOt'nTEEN HOTIR SESSION last month, a group of some twenty

of various denominations and Irom the four corners of metropolitan Chicago compiled a list of crucial realities which, because they are the crucialities of civiliz/d man, must be taken with urgent seriousness by the contemporary Church. Meeting under the auspices of an Ecumenical Institute program held in the conference rooms of the Continental Illinois 13ank and Trust Company, they probed their sensitivity to the mind of Mid­America in the space age and summarized the events and issues that appear to be shaping a new era:

-the fact of a new science whicll is issuing in radical alteration in our cosmological images and common sense, combined with the collapse of past mythologies and the waning influence of the Churcll in our time.

-the rise of the new nations and the emergence of the super­city with a general shift in the various broad power centers coupled with an increasing com" plexity in the political life of man both on the international and local levels. -a growing universal temper manifest in worldwide mobility, in the increasing spirit of internationalism, in the merging of economic destinies (as in the Common Market), in the ecumenical movement and vision within the Church, in the multifarious revolutions in communications, and in great commonly experienced threats such as global conflict.

-the presence of the new technologies and the currently unfathomable possi. bilities of space­probing, along with related issues of magnitudinal population explosio~l, and automation with its manifold implications for human society. -the sensitizing of the human conscience in the n~atter of racial justice and the ensuing demand to create immediately new structures of c~luity in every area of our social existence.

In brief, someone said, ours is an era that may be known to future historians as The Creat Transposition. The Ecumenical Institute is a research and ecu. cational center whose job is to explore new strategies between this "transposing" world and the churches of all denominations. It coordinates practical expressions of ecumenicity in the greater Chicago area, nml rolates in its work to the many and varied pioneering experiments conducted within local congre. gations, interdenominational centers, group ministries, councils of churches, and other organizations who represent the vast efforts of the Church to muster her fore s hl new responses befitting the demands of suclt a new age.

The merger, announced in July by Federation President George F. Sisler, was met with enthusiasm by church leaders throughout the metropolitan area, especially those who had nurtured the fledgling venture to maturity. It was seen as the potential fulfillment of the original vision that had brought the Institute into existence and as a way of expanding the mission of the project to serve the nation on behalf of the Conciliar Movement.

Religion editors of Chicago newspapers, all of whom had covered the birth and growth of the Institute and some of whom were members of its board, heralded the merger as a significant move. David Meade of The Chicago Daily News, under an eight column headline, "Churches Spiritual Renewal in the Works," wrote: "A new kind of urban renewal is in the works for metropolitan Chicago. It's a plan to renew our churches . . . throu~h expanded activities of the Ecumenical Institute."

The "expanded activities" were actually launched in October when, after a full summer of orienting themselves in the vast sociological developments of the metropolitan area, the faculty extended the Institute's School of Religious Studies to sene the entire metropolis. The programs, described on other pages ol this issue of Image, are higllly experimental, geared toward discovering the most feasible means of provhling ecumenical theological education for a growing megalopolis, for Mid­America, for the nation and the world.

To augment this expansion, Dr. Edgar H. S. Chandler, Executive Vice President of the Federation, announced the appointment of Joseph W. Mathews to the position of Dean of the Institute, replacing Dr. Leibrecht who had resigned to become a Protestant observer at the Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church in Rome, while rel~laining in a consultative relationship to the Institute.

Along with Mathews, an ecumenical group of other laymen and clergymen were appointed as th' Institutt's facttlty. Tltey represent various denominations and have associated themselves as a corporate ministry over a period of six years in an attempt to discover new approaches to the group ministry structure, a plan that has become widespread in recent years because of the complexities of the task of renewing the Church in the midst of the highly complex world of today. In this group, each member has a particular field of interest in theological education such as theological ethics, philosophy of religion or contemporary theology. In :'ddition, each member has a sp.wi:d cnneern in one of thc secular disciplines such as political science, literature, etc., and each is experienced further in a practical field such as social welfare, education, engineering, attd television. All arc professionally trained thcologiane and graduates of ~arious dtl~ol,~inalitma! stl~,hlaries.