Joe Holley, an editor of the Texas Observer, had some things to say recently about his alma mater, Abilene Christian University. Returning with his wife to the campus for the first time in 15 years, they stepped into the student center only to be told in a loud female voice, “No shorts allowed.” He reported that he and his wife laughed about the expulsion but that he was bitter. Realizing that one experience does not an essence make, he nonetheless saw such incidents as nourishing caricature, “and often enough,” he added, “caricature is truth writ large.” One is left to wonder if such rules have any real meaning, and, if so, if they should be imposed upon visitors to their embarrassment.

A Harvard professor, whom I know personally, has written a book on The Mind of John Paul II, in which he reveals that the pope once quarried in a mine. While the professor, George H. Williams, an expert in Polish history and fluent in the language, obviously admires his subject, he is disappointed with the pope’s attitude toward Protestants in the ecumenical movement. Seeing that the Protestants were tolerant of abortion, homosexuality, and violence (liberation theology), the pope was led to add ethics as a norm for intercommunion as well as doctrine. Should it not give Protestants something to think about when the pope hesitates to commune with us, not so much over doctrinal differences as moral imperatives?

The right-wing of the Churches of Christ is probably doing more critical thinking than the main-line. This quote from The Persuader, published by a “conservative” Church of Christ in Dallas, illustrates my point: “Baptism ‘for the remission of sins’ is not biblical. Such was never preached! Yet we do that very thing and then when our neighbors honestly perceive of our teaching ‘water salvation’ we resent it. Instead of resenting it we should tear up our legalistic outlines and preach it as the apostles did. It was always baptism in relationship to faith and repentance that was ‘for the remission of sins.’ That is as the principle of faith led sinners to the blood of Christ. Every condition must relate directly to Christ and Him crucified.”

Dave Reagan sent me a copy of a letter signed by the elders of the First Christian Church in Mena, Arkansas and addressed to a dissenting group that left them sometime back. “We humbly ask your forgiveness for our failure to love you as we should and for our failure to maintain the bond of unity that should exist among true disciples of Jesus,” they said to the dissenting group, and went on to say that an invitation for them to return was lovingly extended. “If you feel obligated to maintain your present course,” they went on to say, “may love and cooperation between the two congregations grow to proportions fittingly honoring our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We neglected to tell you of a glorious faux paus in the Firm Foundation last year, the June 12 issue. Dan Coker, missions teacher at ACU, wrote an article in which he offered to help congregations in “forming a missionary society.” Before God, that is what it said! An Abilene professor helping congregations in starting a missionary society! That of course would not do, so in a subsequent issue there appeared a correction. It should have read “forming a missionary strategy,” not society. “The typesetter goofed,” it said, and then added: “In this instance it made a whale of a difference, and we are sorry.” I wonder if someone did not again goof, and if that should not have read: “In this instance it made a wail of a difference.” Oh, well, it is too bad that we miss all these chances to laugh at ourselves and poke a little fun at our shallowness.