OUR CHANGING WORLD

 

There is a move on to create the World Peace Tax Fund, which would allow conscientious objectors to war to pay 56% of their taxes (the percentage of the federal budget now going to the military) into a special fund for peaceful purposes. There are presently 14 organizations working for such legislation. Besides the “peace churches” such as the Quakers and Mennonites, there is support from the U. S. Catholic Conference, United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church.

A Disciples of Christ minister, Roger N. Carstensen, has begun the Institute for Biblical Renewal, which is dedicated to stamping out Biblical illiteracy. While the Disciples are supportive, he describes it as his own “Faith enterprise” and is funded by private donations. He issues some exciting materials for Bible study that take the students to the Bible itself. If you would like more information, write him at 337 S. Milledge Ave., Athens, Ga. 30605.

Arnold Hardin, a minister among the “conservative” (anti-Herald of Truth) Churches of Christ, was so impressed with an editorial by Reuel Lemmons of the Firm Foundation, that he reproduced it in his own The Persuader. One paragraph reads: “The times demand original thought. It has been so long since many in the church have had a bright new idea we would be uncomfortable with one. One of the tragedies of our times is sterile thinking. We think the same thoughts and accept the same conclusions of our predecessors without question and without productive thinking.”

The bulletin of a church in Kansas says this about itself: “The Rossville Christian Church is an undenominational congregation with no creed but Christ and no book save the sacred word. The government is simple in that it is presided over by elders and deacons selected in a democratic manner and chosen to fulfill their offices as detailed in the New Testament. This church has congregational autonomy, the right of the congregation to self-government. The minister is regarded as minister, teacher, and evangelist, and holds no official authority exceeding any other member.” The bulletin also states that the church’s terms of fellowship “shall be as broad as the conditions of salvation and identical with them,”

Churches these days are giving a lot of attention to saving the home, presumably because they realize that it is about to get away from us. Even the Free Will Baptists are involved. In their Contact magazine recently they rewrote one familiar line of Scripture to read, “What shall it profit a man if he win the whole world and lose his own family.” Giving advice to both man and wife, they advise the man to talk to his wife for 30 minutes each day and to keep going out on dates (with his wife, that is!). The woman is urged never to nag and to reduce her wants in order to meet the family budget. They insist that for the Christian the acid test of one’s faith is to show love at home.