CHALLENGE OF THE SECULAR ORDER
PERRY GRESHAM

Thirty years ago I was an advanced graduate student at Columbia University. By special permission we were living in the comfortable apartments of Union Theological Seminary. Paul Tillich was my next door neighbor. We fell in together as we walked home from Broadway one snowy January day. I asked him his impression of the church in the 1940’s.

I clearly remember his opening sentence which is just as pertinent for the 1970’s. “The church is losing its identity with centers of power in the secular order.” There was a time when a politician felt impelled to show his church identity. Men of business cherished their church affiliations as an important factor in public posture. Public education was once the educational expression of the Protestant church mission. Philanthropy found its wellsprings in the churches.

The snow falls on these Bethany hills today as it fell on the grey pavement in front of Riverside Church then. Paul Tillich is dead and I am sixty-two. The prophecy is now fact. The church must regain its redemptive relationship with the secular order or civilization will be the loser, for when faith flies out the window, superstition walks in the front door.

Opportunity sounds its trumpet from every church portal. Government, business, labor, the professions, and even entertainment are in search of meaning which the church could supply. Any vital church in any city could do more toward human urban renewal than some new project of government, industry, or both.

The perspective of the church based on the love of God and the derivative love of man is precisely what the secular world needs. War, greed, crime and violence stem from the Cain influence in man. The church with its new unity throughout the world could start a new era based on love such as the apostles started in the first century. The era of reconciliation begins in a local church and the attitude of intelligent goodwill begins in the individual human heart.

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Perry Gresham is president of Bethany College, Bethany, West Virginia.