Religion: Christians Behind the Curtain

Should a Christian church under a Communist regime resist, and be driven underground? Or should it bow to the state for the sake of continuing as an organized entity? Or something in between? These are not academic questions in China and Poland, in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Rumania, whose Christians sometimes feel that their Western brethren may be a bit too impatient for a new age of catacombs.

Last week the National Lutheran Council was studying a tortured message on the subject from eight top-ranking leaders of the Hungarian Lutheran Church. The Hungarian Lutherans said they felt that it was better to continue...