"Christ Is Wounded"

Up until last week no U. S. Protestant denomination had given full, official approval to Re-Thinking Missions, the report made public last month by the Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry (TIME, Nov. 28). Of the seven denominations whose laymen were concerned in the Inquiry, only three mission boards--Methodist, Baptist. Congregational -- have guardedly agreed to cooperate.

Last week two more churches made known their position. The General Council of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. revealed that, meeting in Chicago three weeks ago, it had unanimously pronounced the report "virtually a denial of evangelical Christianity." The Presbyterian Church would, of course, sympathetically consider every "forward-looking policy" but never would it "abandon the New Testament position and surrender the only hope the world has of overcoming the insidious atheism and agnosticism of our generation." Another Presbyterian objection: "We confidently expected that an increase in missionary enthusiasm would result from the Commission's Report, but fear that at least in some quarters it may have the opposite effect."

Added the Spiritual Emphasis Committee of the General Council: "It is not alone the enemies of Christianity that challenge the Gospel, but Christ is wounded in the house of His friends."

The evangelical content of Re-Thinking Missions was also too meagre for the United Presbyterian Church of North America, whose Board of Foreign Missions repudiated its "deflection from the fact that Jesus Christ is the only and eternal Son of God."

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