Preface
This book is intended to represent the best thinking I can do on what seems to me a most urgent question, the question of how the Church of Jesus Christ can be so reconstructed as to play its potential role in the redemption of contemporary civilization.
The idea of the Church as a redemptive society has grown and developed in my own thought for many years. Though earlier efforts to deal with this theme are not duplicated in the present volume, they may reasonably be viewed as steps on the way. If any reader is interested in the progress of my own thought on the subject at hand publications are available. The first of these, written at the height of the great war and published in 1944, contained a chapter entitled "The Necessity of a Redemptive Society." The theme of the chapter was expanded later into a full length book, published in 1948, called Alternative to Futility. This book had an unexpected by-product in the formation of a loosely organized movement which, fortunately, crossed all denominational lines, and which continues to exist to this day, with many different names. I have learned a great deal from the thousands of dedicated Christians who have tried to produce new centers of vitality, not outside the Church, but within it. A third step, which marked growth in my own thinking, was the acceptance of the invitation to write, early in 1950, three articles for Presbyterian Life. The articles were entitled, "The Recovery of the Lost Provinces," "Recovery of Faith," and "The Order of the Carpenter." There were reprinted in a pamphlet sponsored by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society. Now, after eleven more years of
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thinking and learning and practical experimenting, with our situation really worse rather than better, I am ready to publish what I hope are mature conclusions regarding the urgently needed reformation of the Church in our time.
Perhaps it is only fair to say that I am a life-long member of the Religious Society of Friends. Though I value this heritage, it has been my intention never to let it cut me off from the life of the Church Universal. Since I was first introduced to it thirty-five years ago, I have accepted unconditionally the trenchant dictum of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "He, who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth, will proceed by loving his own Sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all." This explanation may help some readers to understand that my emphasis upon the essential Church as a militant order is not, for one of my background, a gratuitous paradox. I have made this emphasis for two reasons. First, the urgency of time demands it; second, it is the emphasis of the New Testament.
It would not be right to conclude this preface without mentioning, for the first time in print, the great affection I feel for Eugene Exman, director of the Religious Books Department of Harper & Brothers. He accepted my first published book, twenty-five years ago, and he has been closely associated with the planning of all subsequent volumes.
The substance of this book was originally delivered as the Menno Simons Lectures at Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, in 1960. Early in 1961 it was given as the Wilson Lectures at McMurry College, Abilene, Texas, and as the Layne Lectures at the New Orleans Baptist Seminary.
E.T.
Earlham College
Easter, 1961
