WHAT HAPPENED IN WICHITA
By Robert R. Meyers

During the past year the Riverside Church of Christ in Wichita, Kansas, has received publicity in the pages of the Firm Foundation and the Gospel Guardian, in several church bulletins, and in a number of “open letters” circulated by individual preachers who were concerned about Riverside’s welfare. The following account of what has happened in Wichita during the past two and one-half years is not meant so much as an answer to the articles named above as it is an attempt to show how tragically Christian brethren may be divided where the legalistic spirit is allowed dominance over the spirit of Christ.

This is not a new story. Churches of Christ are split in every major city in America, and in most of the villages. But it is especially appropriate that the Riverside story be told, because this congregation has a long and honorable history. It has been ministered to by men called “sound” and by men whose names loom large in Church of Christ honor rolls. Yet this congregation, one of the oldest in a city of 250,000, is today not permitted to list its services in the composite newspaper advertisement sponsored by several other Churches of Christ. It has been publicly disfellowshipped in two congregations, and tacitly disfellowshipped by others. It has been catapulted from grace in a remarkably swift and effective way, and the most incredible tales have been told about it. The true story should be told so that thoughtful Christians may ponder long upon the spirit which orthodox Church of Christism breeds in its adherents.

In complex human problems the error is never wholly on one side. Both sides made mistakes in the Wichita tragedy. But the greater guilt can be ascertained, and some judgment as to the grosser errors can be made. This essay proceeds on the assumption that an honest and objective student of what happened in Wichita can reach conclusions as to what the most harmful mistakes were.

No person deeply involved in such events can be expected to be completely objective. The writer promises to try to the best of his ability, bur alerts his readers to watch carefully for signs of defensive posture and rationalization. Where they are detected, the reader should make the necessary adjustments.

Since it is not the purpose of this report to create hatred for any individuals, no one will be identified by name. Riverside has no interest in retaliating against persons who have injured her. They are simply people, like ourselves. Quite as sincere as any of us, they were sure they were doing the right thing. But the religious attitudes which victimized these persons, we abhor with all our hearts. However convinced some of our brothers in Wichita were that Riverside was a threat to orthodoxy, the techniques used to stifle Riverside were an outrage to Christian conduct and to human decency. We call for a religious attitude which would end such conduct among brethren in Christ who differ. We believe that a better spirit is not only possible, but already in existence in many places among our own brethren, and we believe that it is growing gloriously and triumphantly on many fronts.

Some of the incidents which led to Riverside’s being isolated in Wichita are almost incredible. In the following pages they will be described for the first time in public. Many of Riverside’s own members know only a few of them, since they were never discussed from the pulpit. It is probable that all of us here were unwise in remaining publicly quiet as long as we did about the pressures being brought to bear upon us. But our hope that the attack would diminish in vigor and increase in accuracy was not realized. If local pressures have dropped a little, the remote misrepresentations grow in wildness. So it seems best to put these facts in print and give readers who wish to do so a chance for making comparisons.

In early spring of 1960, the writer was asked to serve the Riverside congregation as a minister. Believing that one may best search out and speak the truth when his financial health does not depend on his always saying the “right” things, I agreed to come only if I were employed by one of the universities in Wichita. This was quickly and happily agreed upon, and my labor was to begin in the fall of 1960, at the expiration of a contract I had with Harding College.

Between this agreement and the beginning of its fulfillment, several months intervened. One of the alert deacons at Riverside had a correspondence with a friend of his who was on the Bible faculty at Harding. The friend advised him that my views were heretical and set them forth in detail. Acting exactly as a group of Christians should do in such a matter, the Riverside leaders mailed the charges to me and asked for a point-by-point reply. I happily made such a reply, feeling that this was a splendid opportunity to present any potentially controversial views I held and to do so many months before my association with Riverside was to begin.

After careful study of many pages of charges, and my own many pages of reply, the Riverside leaders wrote to say that they were completely satisfied. The deacon who initiated the correspondence later became so strong a supporter of the Riverside position that he gave up a good job and moved to another state rather than submit to the request that he denounce this congregation. But before this happened, and while he was still dubious, two Wichita ministers told him that they would “run that fellow out of town in six months.” To the truth of these statements, probably made in semi-seriousness, the deacon has since given witness in print.

During the first few months of the writer’s association with Riverside, all of us were excited about visible progress. Attendance set records, contributions climbed, and we talked of the need for extra seating. But during this period the writer was striking out sharply at prejudices, in whatever form, and trying to get people to think clearly and honestly about the Bible. Inconsistencies in Church of Christ interpretations of God’s word were occasionally touched upon. And as these comments reached others in Wichita, particularly among preachers who were anticipating them, troubles began. Those who profit from tradition, either in terms of money or prestige, cannot bear to see it questioned. All who like to say, “We have The Truth,” are upset when a colleague points out ways in which we are sorely defective.

All church groups have problems. Methodists face the problem of theological vagueness, and many of my Methodist friends openly admit this. Unitarians face the problem of intellectual snobbery and complete severance from uniquely Christian ideas, and Unitarian friends have candidly confessed to this. The besetting sin of our own people in the Church of Christ is Pharisaism, self-righteousness, exclusivism. We elevate our own understanding of the Bible to an infallible authoritarianism. We minimize our own defects, hide our own inconsistencies, and pounce gleefully upon those of other religious groups wherever we can discover them. This is Pharisaism, the deadliest sin described in the New Testament. The extraordinary reaction against such an attack is probably the clearest proof that it is urgently needed in the Church of Christ.

But even so, it is likely that disagreements would not have assumed major proportions had it not been for one incident. When the gun is loaded and cocked, someone still must pull the trigger. It was pulled in Wichita when one of our members decided she did not like to hear criticism of Church of Christ failings, and left us. She had been disappointed, for other reasons, in several Wichita congregations and had moved about considerably in previous years. She is a woman who has done many good works and given generously of her money. It is one of her deepest sorrows that she has never been able to win most of her family to membership in the Church of Christ. She is a sincere woman, almost incredibly zealous for the superiority of the Church of Christ to all other religious groups. Emotionally torn by failure to win many of her loved ones to her views, she could not bear to hear in her home church the very criticisms which some of these loved ones had leveled in their own defense. Desperately in need of the security of an authoritarian religion, she could not relinquish it. Departure was the only thing left. Departure, and the most vigorous protests she could make.

Had this woman spoken only the criticisms actually made from the pulpit at Riverside, most Wichita preachers would have been incensed. But to the actual rebukes against Church of Christ narrowness, she added the inevitable distortions of a bitterly unhappy person. Words of praise for Church of Christ contributions, and words of modification to many of the criticisms, were not related at all as she blazoned her grievances about the city. Acquainted with most preachers in Wichita, she went to various ones with her reports of what was happening at Riverside. It was not long before we began to hear of group meetings of preachers, and soon Riverside was faced with an ultimatum. In effect, it was that Riverside could keep the Maude Carpenter Children’s Home, which it had founded and operated for many years, only if the present minister were fired. If he were kept, financial support of the Home would begin to drop off. The preachers declared that they would not permit brethren to support a Home whose children attended the Riverside services and heard “heresy.” The threat was not idle. Financial support of the Home dropped abruptly. The superintendent reported a $4,000 decrease in the very month in which the ultimatum became clearly known to us.

At a business meeting, Riverside members acknowledged that the Home could not be operated without the complete support of congregations in Wichita and in the Southwest. It was clear that the congregation could not retain the writer and expect to operate the Home as well.

I urged all present to make a permanent decision, reminding them that the time was propitious for me to seek another college teaching job. I stressed the point that within a few weeks, it would be impossible to break my Friends University teaching contract before an entire school term had passed. Had I known then how acrimonious the disagreement would become, I would have left voluntarily. Later, when Riverside members had proved their faith in more charitable religious attitudes by their sacrificial loyalty, it became utterly impossible to desert them.

Everyone present refused to consider this alternative, however, feeling that Riverside Christians should be allowed to make their own judgments about what was truth. There was a general feeling that the Home needed to be placed under a larger church anyway, and although we disliked being forced to do this, we agreed that this was the course to follow.

Riverside’s emotional ties with the Children’s Home were understandably strong. For some fifteen years it had carried the chief burden of supporting the Home administratively. Then suddenly, sister churches declared that the children must go to an “orthodox” Church of Christ and be saved from hearing “heresies” each Sunday. One minister in Wichita considered sending some of his older women to the Home to counsel individually with the children and try to save them from the effects of Riverside’s religious approach. Perhaps the saddest irony in all this is that the children had been compelled to attend so many services of Churches of Christ all over Wichita that most of them had learned how not to listen to sermons at all! Compulsory religion had had the effect upon them which it has on many other people.

Riverside’s members, competent and intelligent people with a wide range of professional and vocational skills, were puzzled and pained by such an ultimatum. The implication was clear that Wichita preachers felt Riverside members were either incapable of judging sermons for themselves, or that they did not sufficiently care whether what they heard was truth or error. We felt, on the contrary, that Riverside Christians knew the difference between truth and falsehood without the help of Wichita preachers. We also felt that we cared deeply about right and wrong. It seemed to us that it was a serious violation of congregational independence for a group of preachers to try to force their views upon us.

One thought which occurred often to us was this: Riverside had been ministered to by a long succession of highly endorsed, “sound” and “orthodox” preachers. This had gone on for many years. The names read like a roll call of some of the most eminent among us. Had it occurred to our friends to wonder how it was that all these years of indoctrination by the “soundest” men had suddenly been overturned in a few months by someone unknown? Was truth all so delicate as this suggested? Was the pernicious error of believing in the sincerity and goodness of men who differ with us religiously so powerful that it could undo in a few months what good gospel preachers had worked on so laboriously for fifteen years?

Or was it rather that people at Riverside were, in general, emotionally and intellectually ready to throw off the old exclusivism and Pharisaism, and required only a convinced voice from the pulpit to rally them? I cannot compare with many of my dissident brethren in persuasiveness and personal charm. It had to be the truth and essential decency of our position which appealed to Riverside’s members. Their minds simply accepted what experience had been urging them toward for years, and their testimony is that they are far happier and more effective Christians now. They have changed no practice known to Churches of Christ, but they have changed their attitudes toward those who believe differently, and they will never go back to the narrow and loveless ways of exclusivism.

The Riverside elders thought, after discussion of the ultimatum about the Home, that it would be helpful to hold a five-night meeting so that local ministers who could not visit at other times might have a chance to hear the Riverside speaker and determine whether the “here say” was as bad as rumor made it. Hundreds of personal invitations were mailed. Not a single minister involved in issuing the ultimatum attended the meetings, despite the fact that not a single one of them had ever heard the man they were accusing! They were apparently willing to continue their campaign of pressure on the basis of here say evidences. The reader can imagine how hard it was for Christians at Riverside to understand the unwillingness of Wichita preachers to come, for even one time, and hear a sermon from the Riverside pulpit.

A few visitors came from other Church of Christ congregations and the response of most was a mild surprise that the sermons sounded so much like those they were accustomed to hearing. They detected no heresies. A few, however, may have felt as a visiting elder did. Asked if he had heard anything heretical, he replied that he had not, but added that the minister had doubtless seen him walk in and had changed the sermon. After a moment’s thought, he said: “Oh yes, there is one thing. He kept talking tonight about the inner man and the outer man. Now I know about that outer man, but I never heard about any inner man. That doesn’t sound like good old-fashioned gospel preaching to me.” This man is a pleasant fellow, who probably would never harm anyone deliberately, but of his ability to detect heresy the reader must judge. He had spent a lifetime serving as an overseer of the flock, but had apparently never encountered Ephesians 3:16. Sometime later, he led the Christians under his pastorate into a boycott of all things connected with Riverside.

As the preachers continued to meet about the city, and as reports came to us of their various plans for forcing us to yield to their views, it became ever clearer that we must try to expedite the slow legal arrangements being made to transfer the Home. Meanwhile, the campaign against Riverside took many forms. Some of the Wichita preachers insisted that we be publicly disfellowshipped, with pulpit announcements and insertions in church journals. Soberer heads demurred, doubting that scriptural precedent could be found for such action and not quite so convinced as were two or three others that Riverside’s “heresy” was that dark. No joint action was taken. Two or three preachers denounced Riverside from their pulpits, said we could no longer be fellowshipped, and warned their members against attending our services. We have since had a number of people place membership with us from these congregations.

In September of 1961, the Riverside congregation printed several hundred copies of the following letter. It should be read carefully, since it summarizes so well the essential differences between Riverside and her sister congregations. It went as follows:

Dear Friend,

Our effort at Riverside to study God’s word without prejudices or fears, and to follow truth where it clearly leads, has caused some misunderstanding among Churches of Christ in Wichita. Because we are trying to create what we believe is a more Christian attitude, some have thought that we were set to change Christian practices. This is not true, but because of misrepresentations of our true position, we feel it is imperative for you to know exactly what is true and what is not.

We feel that the plea of the Church of Christ has been crippled often by narrowness and bigotry on the part of many of its supporters. We want to create a better attitude toward those who honestly differ with us. We believe in their sincerity and intelligence, just as we believe in our own. Believing that we must stand for what we see as right, we try to communicate our own best understanding of God’s word to them, but we do not pass judgment upon them nor assume that we alone are always infallible.

This position, which we think to be Christian, is mistakenly called “modernism” by some of our fellow Christians in Wichita. The term “modernism” is inflammatory and is used in so many different ways that we deplore its use, and urge our friends to stop labeling and try to be better informed about what we are really standing for.

We believe that we should be as true to the Bible as we can. We believe that we should keep our minds open and receptive to truth, so that any errors we fall into can be corrected. We know that Bible truth gets overlaid at times with men’s deductions and inferences, and we want to be careful to distinguish between the clear commandments of God and the arbitrary interpretations of men.

Simple and logical as this position may seem, it has disturbed some and has made them believe that we are going far beyond these intentions. We are not. The present minister at Riverside has for 22 years preached the inspiration of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the necessity of the church, the oneness of the true church, and faith, repentance, and baptism as the New Testament law of pardon for alien sinners.

He does not advocate the introduction of an instrument of music into the worship, the abolishing of weekly communion, the practice of open membership, nor sprinkling and pouring as substitutes for immersion, although all these have been irresponsibly charged.

Since it is impossible to anticipate all misunderstandings, or guess what charges may come from those who do not know what we are doing, we ask you to bring your questions to anyone in this congregation and satisfy your mind about our emphasis. We believe that what we are doing is greatly needed, and that you will strongly support it. We invite you to search the Scriptures courageously with us, and enjoy the challenge of studying God’s will without fear or bias. It is a stimulating experience, and one which we all believe is pleasing to God. We welcome you heartily to such a commitment as this.

All Riverside Members

The statements in this letter were labored over carefully. Not a single one of them is false to views held at Riverside. They are as comprehensive as we could make them in such a letter. The statements directly refute certain direct charges — charges which were flagrantly false. Riverside has never planned to order an organ, abolish weekly communion, practice open membership, and so forth, and the quickest answer to such irresponsible charge is a resounding negative. It is certainly true that Riverside Christians do not consider the use of an instrument, or the frequency of observance of the Lord’s Supper, as matters of law, but this does not invalidate the truth of the statements made. We cannot talk helpfully to men about where commandment and tradition meet until we have first gotten rid of inflammatory charges which upset them so much that they cannot listen to reason.

The campaign went on. Having failed so far to remove the Riverside speaker, some now tried to remove his audience. A telephone campaign began. Riverside members were called, many of them repeatedly, and urged to leave their fellowship so that no one would be left to support “that heresy.” Old friends of Riverside people, in other congregations, pled with them to leave. Urged on by preachers who had never been in a Riverside worship service, they were sometimes tearful. Relatives exercised the strong powers of family loyalty to win cousins, brothers, nephews, aunts and uncles away. The campaign was partially successful. Over several months, perhaps some twenty-five adults left. It was impossible to know whether all left for the theological reasons which they gave. Some were weary of quarrels in years past, some wanted a livelier social life than this small congregation afforded, and some disliked comments made about the sin of racial discriminations. At any rate, for a time it was uncertain whether Riverside could continue to meet as an independent and strong group.

My wife and I were harassed by telephone calls in which the caller would ring but say nothing when answered. There would be a long, living silence. This went on for months. It happened as many as twenty and thirty times in a day, and occurred as late as 1:30 and 3:30 a.m. I remember five phone calls during the space of a noon meal. Since the calls also came to the church office in the same way, we supposed they were connected with the campaign to remove heresy from Wichita, but we could not be sure of this, of course. We still get these calls occasionally, but they are not a great nuisance.

At one point, the chorus of a Bible chair at a nearby state university wanted to visit us and sing in our building. Arrangements were completed by telephone, and announcements made from our pulpit and bulletin. But one of the leading preachers in Wichita heard about this and felt it his duty to intervene. He instructed the elders of the out-of-state church to keep their chorus away from Riverside. So, at the last moment, the leader of the chorus telephoned to tell me that his group could not disobey their elders and sing for us. He said that two carloads would come anyway to show that as individual Christians they disapproved of such tactics.

Those who have studied the New Testament will wonder where one could find a precedent for such action. One wonders if “heresy” is so potent that it can undo, in one Sunday morning, what all the years of sound, orthodox preaching had built up in these college youngsters. One also wonders whether genuine Christian compassion might not have urged the chorus to come ahead, in hopes that our hearts would be softened and we would yield ourselves more readily to correction. Orthodoxy is fearful indeed when it will not even expose the gospel in song to those thought to be in error! It was difficult for Christians at Riverside to understand how this particular method of retaliation could be thought helpful or wise.

The next event involved a young man who had achieved noteworthy success as a director for Christian camps. He had held a camp in the state the year before, but received an offer to head an eastern camp at higher salary and with greater possibilities for good. He was about to accept, when the board of the Kansas camp urged him not to do so. He agreed to stay, and gave up the eastern job. A short time later a Wichita preacher, representing the Kansas camp board, told him he would have to leave Riverside and denounce the minister there, or give up the Kansas job.

The young man refused to leave Riverside, or to denounce what he believed was an honest effort to teach God’s word without party prejudices. As a result, he lost the job. It was too late for him to get other employment for the summer. No offer of financial remuneration was made. It seemed to Riverside that this was not a Christian solution.

Elders at Riverside worked three months trying to select a board of twelve men who would represent a wide diversity of professions and congregations in the city and state. When this board finally convened, one board member took the floor to state that the board itself was unscriptural and that he voted to disband it at once and turn the Home over to one of the larger congregations in Wichita. Since the man presumably believed that his position on the board was unscriptural when he accepted it, it appeared that he had taken it so that he might be in a position to make his motion. The irony was that Riverside had been perfectly willing all the time to turn the home over to another church, but had been unable to learn who would be willing to take it.

Word circulated that the staff at the Home would have to stop worshiping God at Riverside if they were to keep their jobs after the transfer. This did not apply to one or two members of “denominational” churches who were employed at the Home. They were allowed to keep their jobs and their church affiliations. House parents who believed in the believer’s right to study God’s word according to conscience were upset. It was impossible for them to feel the security they required for their great responsibility, and most of them decided to go elsewhere for jobs rather than submit.

The superintendent was given notice to seek employment elsewhere, and did so. It should be said that he was given fair treatment by the elders of Wichita’s Cleveland Avenue congregation, who saw to it that he had adequate time to find a new position. The elders of this congregation were moderate in handling the thorny problem which they inherited. A debt of gratitude is owed to them because of the splendid way in which they assumed charge of the Home, and the way in which they are now working to make it an effective center for Christian concern. It is another example of a truth which many have learned: that congregational elders are almost always surprisingly humane and decent when not under the domination of preachers. Preachers are sensitive to position and prestige, especially since they are hired to represent, party positions. Elders are independent, financially, and tend to react more calmly to alleged threats to orthodoxy. Riverside is happy to know that the work of many years is being carried on energetically and effectively by elders of the above named church.

An experienced and trained counselor, brought to the Home from another state, had proved a valuable addition but he, too, took another position rather than face the prospect of a direct purge. He is now a counselor in a public school system. His experience is probably lost forever to Church of Christ children’s homes.

Two secretaries of many years of service were next to go. One, whose competence as bookkeeper and secretary at the Home has been highly praised, is the wife of a Riverside elder. She had been at the Home more than a dozen years, and it will take someone else years to learn what she knew. But facing the purge, she felt it necessary to sever her connections with the Home and take a job at the city library. The other lady was the wife of the Home’s most influential single personage, a former elder of Riverside, now deceased.

She was told to seek other employment, since she could not continue to be a secretary and handle office functions while she attended Riverside. So potent is “heresy” that it contaminates typewriters, files, and the sorting of gifts. This lady now works at a branch of the YMCA.

Others, including house parents and dieticians and cooks, have also resigned rather than stop attending Riverside. A very few staff members, recently hired and feeling no strong commitment to Riverside, chose to change their membership and continue to work at the Home. There is not a shred of animosity toward these good people on the part of anyone here. They are doing a good work.

During this time we received a postcard from the minister in Wichita who was responsible for the composite church advertisement in the Saturday paper. His note was peremptory. He said that as of the following Saturday the name Riverside would no longer appear. Since this was clearly a public action, tantamount to a disfellowshipping, we decided we should quiz all local elders to determine whether they agreed with this action. We mailed over 60 letters, pleading for a reply to what seemed to us a crucial question of Christian ethics. We received six cards back, two approving the action, two condemning it, and two saying they would wait and report after a business meeting (which they failed to do so).

After a time, we decided that since we had been arbitrarily cut out of the composite advertisement, we should take our program to the public on our own. One member paid immediately for several months of newspaper space, allowing for a 250-word article each week. Another paid for several months of radio time on a local station. The radio sermons are too long to repeat, but a sample of the newspaper copy follows:

Any group of convinced religionists has a hard time being completely fair to those whose doctrines are different. It is temptingly easy to discover only the defects of others, and to publicize them gleefully, while keeping very quiet about similar faults in ourselves, and magnifying our strengths.

As members of the Church of Christ, we know perfectly well how badly marred our own history has been by unfairness to other religious groups. We have too often seized upon some public failure among members of differing groups and intimated that such was the inevitable consequence of improper interpretation of the true religion!

At Riverside, we deplore this party narrowness. We know that one does not prove the inferiority of another religion by falling with unholy glee upon the human failures of people within it. We do not intend to profess such horror at the shortcomings of others, when we are only men ourselves and often fall beneath the high standards we should like to hold.

We refuse to see in the faults of others a proof of their duplicity, while we easily excuse similar defects in ourselves. We feel it is better for men to be busy curing their own sicknesses than to go about with microscopes searching for germs in others. Or, to put it much better, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and fail to notice the plank in your own?” (Matt. 7:2)

When a Wichita minister later wrote a lengthy response to a group of these newspaper articles, he made this explanation: “Later when relations became more strained between Riverside and many of the other congregations in the city, the brethren at Riverside evidently thought it was wise to express themselves and they chose the newspaper and the radio as mediums through which this was to be accomplished.” This brother did not say that it was only after his arbitrary action forced Riverside to strike out on its own did it “choose the newspaper and the radio.” We should still be paying our part of the composite advertisement if his action had not been taken.

When we began to make public our plea for a more charitable approach to those who differed with us, many of our brethren in other congregations complained that we were holding the church up to ridicule and letting the “denominations” know that we were having trouble. It was hard for us to avoid the impression that any kind of action was all right, so long as it was directed against us in our “heresy’” but any attempt to put our own side before the public was an outrage against decency. We have been unable to accept such logic.

The result of the newspaper and radio work was that a number of people who had stopped attending the Church of Christ because of its attitude toward other religionists began attending at Riverside. Some came from other Churches of Christ, stating that Riverside had exactly what they had yearned for through many years of partisan strife and bigotry. Among these are some of the most energetic, loyal and devoted Christians now in our group.

The human system cannot stand constant excitement and inevitably the overt actions began to diminish somewhat. Riverside did not simply dry up and blow away. It rallied from the first heavy blows, and began to rebuild. It now has the same number of adults it had before the Exodus, as we term it here, although the loss of some 60 children from the Home left some empty seats. Since there was nothing else vulnerable after the Home had been taken away, the advertisement dropped from the paper, and brotherly contacts removed, we were left in relative peace.

We are still occasionally surprised. A faculty member at one of our nearby Christian colleges no longer visits in our home, despite a close friendship of many years standing. He was told by the president that his job would be in jeopardy if he continued making “those trips to Wichita.” He ceased to make them.

Another piece of advice was given to one of our members by a prominent Bible faculty member in a Texas school. The young man was a student, and had not often been in our services for the past few years. The Bible professor told him that he must not “let it get around that you have any connection with them, or you’ll not be able to get a job in any Church of Christ in the brotherhood.” The young man is torn now between two desires. He would like to preach, but admits that if he did he would say many of the things which have caused Riverside grief. “I would preach much the way you do,” he says, “and if I did that, would I be able to get a job?” Told that he would inevitably have trouble, because he would buck well-organized system of guardians of orthodoxy, he wonders whether he should enter another field of service.

We hear rumors now and then that “Riverside has gone ‘anti’ and is opposed to children’s homes.” This is probably because we no longer have the Home, and people who do not know that it was taken from us by threat have apparently supposed that we gave it up because of a change of policy about child care. We are currently assuming college tuition expenses for two boys who grew up in that Home. It is one of the largest programs of its kind we have ever attempted.

Perhaps the most amazing action taken recently to silence the Riverside voice occurred near the end of the summer. The minister who dropped us from the newspaper advertisement wrote a letter, while I was teaching in Florida, to the president of Friends University. He told the president that he could no longer support Friends because of the activities of one of its faculty members. Without specifying in the letter what the activities were, he included information which left no doubt as to the teacher’s identity. By not spelling out in his letter what these “activities” were, he left it up to the president to wonder whether I was simply a Church of Christ maverick, or perhaps a moral or ethical reprobate who ought to be discharged at once.

The president, fortunately, had had some experience with our people before and understood the tactics which legalism employs when it is goaded. He showed me the letter, assured me of my position, and let me read the reply sent to the Church of Christ minister. I said nothing to the minister and if he reads this it will be his first knowledge that I read his letter and know of his action. I am trying to believe that he can be excused because of his strong convictions, but judged coldly his action seems reprehensible. He is a better man than this action would suggest. Apparently he felt the need to make a last-ditch effort to get Riverside’s influence lessened, even if it meant collaboration with a “denominational” college, where he believes falsehood is taught daily, to do it. Surely legalism is indicted when it can justify such action in the name of Christ.

So far as is known to me, no one at Riverside has retaliated in kind. We have repeatedly encouraged one another to prove the validity of our course by our conduct. No amount of Bible quoting or pious protestations about orthodoxy can take the place of true Christian action. We go about our business quietly, trying to make each service at Riverside a thing of beauty and dignity, pleasing to God and uplifting to men.

We go right on preaching and practicing baptism by immersion for initiation into God’s kingdom. We accept no one into fellowship who has not been immersed into Christ. We sing, as always, without an organ. We take the Lord’s Supper weekly. All is as it has been, except that we refuse to deride and ridicule those who differ with us, and we believe that men are accountable to God in terms of their opportunities and their ability to know his will. For this conviction, we now stand alone in Wichita.

Yet not alone, really. For letters have flowed in to us from all over the country, praising this stand and giving us encouragement. Many sent checks as tangible proof of support. Many lifelong members and ministers of the Church of Christ write that more charitable attitudes toward those who interpret differently from ourselves had to come and will spread everywhere as time passes.

We recognize this problem, that people do not see the monstrousness of an attitude until they have begun to reject it. The average member of the Church of Christ is a kindly person, highly respectable, middle class, quite unaware of the repugnance with which most of the religious world views his authoritarian religious position. To tell him that his personal life is splendid, but that his dogma is in some ways monstrous and inhuman, is to fail utterly to reach him. But more travel and broader education is awakening him slowly to what thoughtful, sincere, compassionate men in other religious groups have already learned. Exclusivism and the conviction of infallible interpretation will one day cease to be a prominent feature of his religion. Thousands in the Church of Christ are profoundly disturbed already, and apathy when their preachers speak the time-honored bromides and platitudes.

In the meantime, those of us who are brothers in Christ but who differ about some matters, can adopt an approach toward one another which will diminish the harm of our disagreement. We can overwhelm one another with love and concern, instead of with secretive insinuations and underhanded machinations. We can immerse one another in kindness, visiting and talking in brotherly caring. There is no question but that this issue of how we shall view those whose religious interpretations are different from our own will loom ever larger through the coming years. A shrinking world and ever increasing educational possibilities absolutely guarantee this. We must find ways to share our opposing views without creating more factions. We must, at long last, learn how to differ from one another in mutual love and respect. Our prayer at Riverside is that God will lead us ahead into fields of greater Christian service than we have ever known, and that He will lead us together.