Gordon Clark: The Christian Century (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1957. The Christian Century. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. XV (45), 2–3. Mar 6

The Christian Century

The Christian Century is the best known and probably the most outspoken organ of modernism in the United States. It is interesting to examine its standards of journalism, its propaganda techniques, and the accuracy of its reporting. A recent issue brings to mind some earlier examples.

In the issue of February 29, 1956, page 261, the Century referred to "the late and unlamented Laymen's Committee." The article asserted, "Cut business and politics out of the Christian's religious concern, and you have left faith dangling..." and so on for several lines. How true this assertion is! It could not be truer. But a turn of the phrase can insinuate more than can be cleared up in a paragraph. Here the impression is given that the Laymen's Committee had advocated that Christians should pay no attention to business or politics. This insinuation is of course utterly false.

There are a great number of shorter examples of biased language. The same issue speaks of "Billy Graham's incredible gaff"; and the previous issue declaimed against the "Creaking Mc- Carran Act."

In reporting the efforts of a Lutheran denomination to maintain its doctrinal standards the Century of February 8, 1956, says, "early departers met a disgruntled visiting minister who had evidently had all he could take of the lecture going on inside. He could not see much sense or make much sense of the speeches." Who was this visiting minister? If he happened to be the Century's reporter, the statement no doubt is absolutely accurate; the Century hardly ever sees sense in maintaining standards of doctrinal purity; but this does not imply that the speeches made no sense. The Century continues, "The preacher pulled out all the stops... The preacher used the communion table like a jury box... the whole sorry sequel... the desolating near-unanimity."

Unintentionally no doubt, in spite of its pulling out its own stops, the Century lets slip the fact that the speeches made sense to nearly everybody present.

One of the Century's most contemptible articles appeared on February 1, 1956, entitled, Five Missionaries Die Needlessly. It states, "The credit that is theirs does not automatically transfer to those who were responsible for sending them to their unnecessary deaths." Of course it is completely true that their credit does not automatically transfer to anybody. But what of the insinuation that someone was responsible for sending them to their unnecessary deaths? Note the continuation. "The greater availability of funds for missionary purposes has resulted in the hasty organization of many 'independent' groups with a real or alleged missionary purpose." Does not this suggest that the board under which these martyrs went out was hastily organized and that its missionary purpose was perhaps only allegedly missionary? No, the Century does not say this; but the Century gives this impression. It continues, "hundreds of poorly trained missionaries... has immensely complicated the work of responsible boards... so-called Bible or independent churches... shallowly conceived... hardly more than rackets whose main purpose is to shake loose the dollars of credulous and uninformed people..."

Can this biased ranting be considered other than contemptible?

Something not so venomous, in fact something almost ludicrous, occurs in the current issue, February 20, 1957, page 222, column 2. "But what has this hard-core fundamentalism to say concerning Christ? Only that he was born of a Virgin and will reappear in a second coming, and that those two matters and no others are really essential to a valid allegiance to and faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Nothing in his teaching, nothing in his death or resurrection... is to be compared in importance to the two articles of the fundamentalist creed about Christ."

Now, this is news indeed. The fundamentalists assert that the death and resurrection of Christ are not fundamentals; the substitutionary atonement and the bodily resurrection are not really essential. Fundamentalists have only two articles of faith: the Virgin Birth and the Second Coming. Well, that is two better than the Christian Century has, anyway.

How can this nonsense be taken? Is it malevolence? Is it abysmal ignorance? Is it irresponsibility? Or is it just the modernist idea of good journalism?

— G.H.C.