Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 129:516 (Oct 1972)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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BSac 129:516 (Oct 72) p. 352

Periodical Reviews

“What’s Campus Crusade Up To?” D. Clair Davis, Eternity, June, 1972, pp. 10-12, 22.

“The Jesus Explosion in Dallas,” J. Claude Evans, The Christian Century, July 19, 1972, pp. 767-69.

“Explo ‘72: ‘Godstock’ in Big D,” Edward E. Plowman, Christianity Today, July 7, 1972, pp. 31-32.

“Corralling Jesus in the Cotton Bowl,” Edward B. Fiske, Saturday Review: Science, July 8, 1972, pp. 15, 20.

Something historic did happen in Dallas June 12–17. Explo ‘72 was historic as a religious event for sheer size if nothing more. Its historic impact in other dimensions must await the passage of time for results and evaluating perspective. Meanwhile it is illuminating to see how the various magazines, religious and secular, reported the event.

Eternity pulled a “scoop” of sorts by running an explanatory and interpretive analysis of Campus Crusade for Christ and of Explo ‘72 in the June issue before the evangelism training conference began. D. Clair Davis, the author, has served on the faculty of Crusade’s Institute of Biblical Studies for staff members. He is both familiar with and sympathetic to the techniques of personal evangelism developed and used by Campus Crusade. He discusses and answers many of the objections raised against the Crusade program.

First he points out that the training in personal evangelism involves actual practice in witnessing, learning by doing and by seeing results. At least Crusade-trained Christians are witnessing the gospel and are winning converts, which is more than a lot of their critics and detractors are doing. There is a case to be made for living the gospel, for a transformed and transforming experience that is consistent with

BSac 129:516 (Oct 72) p. 353

one’s profession of faith has an impact; but there is also a case for proclaiming the gospel. The apostolic church was a witnessing church and so must the twentieth century church be if it is ever to finish its job.

Davis answers other objections to Crusade theology and methodology such as the so-called simplistic theology of its “Four Spiritual Laws” (convert and staff instruction go far beyond this evangelistic starting point), the alleged failure to deal with problems in biblical criticism and science and philosophy (the vital issue is “What will you do with Jesus?”), and the accusation of “easy-believism” on the one hand (in the Pauline tradition of Acts 16:31) and “Lordship evangelism” on the other (in the Pauline tradition of Romans 10:9

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