Reading Scientific American is a different experience from reading other American magazines. The reader feels he is up against something formidably, though quite genially, solid. It is not only that science itself is factual, its effects enormous, and its establishment (comparatively) united. The impression the magazine gives of its subject field derives in part from its own structure, its mode of being, its style. It patrols such a large beat, the expanding sphere of human awareness, and it seems to be actually expanding that sphere itself. And yet one couldn't call it pompous. It is just consciously, but not self-consciously, big.

An appeal for theological affirmation is precisely what the words indicate: It calls away from the negative trends of much recent religious and theological thought. (The distinction between religion and theology does not seem useful here, though the themes in question are found in both.) Such negations have been: the extreme negation of the death-of-God theology, the reactionary negation of the main insights of Vatican II by Catholic traditionalists, the unbalanced negation of institutional religion in favor of the rights of conscience, the practical negation of Christian social commitments in the name of some vague Jesuistic or Pentecostal charisms, the implicit negation of worship in the urge to celebrate life and nature.

In recent years a new economic nationalism has been bom in the developing countries of the “Third World.” The embargo imposed on consuming countries by the Arab producers, followed by the manipulation of prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), sparked the beginning of a significant redistribution of world wealth.

The demand of the Third World for a changed world economic order was highlighted at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on raw materials and development in April, 1974. The industrialized countries evidenced their concern about their “right of access” to other scarce raw materials besides petroleum. But the larger issue dealt with reducing the vast inequities in the international economic order.

The response to the Hartford Appeal has far exceeded the expectations of those who initiated it and of those who participated in drafting the final document. Whatever its faults, it shows every sign of becoming a point of reference that can enliven the kind of debate both its critics and admirers say, they hoped for.

The two most frequent misunderstandings of the Appeal are: (1) that it is aimed mainly, if not exclusively, against the left; and (2) that it is supposed to be some new kind of ecumenical statement of faith. To the second misunderstanding it should be enough to note that the Hartford group had no intention of saying all we believe about God, nature, the Church, the Christ, and human history. We did intend to say some things we thought needed saying about the current state of theology and religion in America.