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More people have experienced “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in America than anywhere else on earth. On the Fourth of July hardly a village in the United States, hardly a city street, is without some celebration of the Declaration of Independence.
Despite complaints about national decline and about “idea gaps” that still separate the actual social and political situation from the announced principles of our historic documents, the American people nevertheless rank high in good will and generosity, in bold venturesomeness and ingenuity, and in general honesty. This reservoir of virtue is apparent to anyone who has visited other continents.
These qualities are not self-wrought, however; they reflect the nation’s orientation, however tenuous, to those distinctive spiritual realities which once lifted the Western world from paganism to a sense of Christian conviction and conscience. The traits that weld a heterogeneous society into a national family—truth, justice, love of neighbor, and benevolence—originate and mature through revealed religion. There may be an “American character,” but there are really no “American virtues.”
No one would deny that America has scars and blemishes. There is inordinate ambition, for example—the greed for power, for prestige, as well as for plenty. There is corruption—in politics, in business, in labor unions, in sports. And there is race prejudice—that devastating blight to the affirmation that “all men are created equal.”
Americans clash over goals and methods. Those who would socialize the American scene battle those who champion a voluntary rather than coerced society. Those who would rely on Big Government’s legislation to solve all man’s needs resist those who maintain—and quite rightly, we believe—that the best and only guarantee of a bright future depends on individuals enlightened to the imperatives of a just social order.
This turbulence does not mean, however, that America has “gone over the brink.” Rather, this stirring may be—indeed, probably is—its hour of decision. Although America’s natal strength may be far-spent, those who live in Washington constantly face the tragic ambiguity between White House solutions for race problems everywhere else and its inability to rescue the District of Columbia from becoming a moral shambles. It is one thing for photogenic politicians accompanied by an arsenal of news photographers and F.B.I. agents to hike fifty miles along the Potomac; it is quite another for a congressman’s wife, let alone an ordinary citizen, to stay at home alone in the District, or for church people to venture out to evening services, or for anyone to walk at night, even in the shadow of the Capitol or the White House. It is high time to reiterate what the founding fathers knew only too well—something that many of their homelands had forgotten—that not the utmost amount of government compulsion but rather the fullest recovery of human dignity is the answer to human problems.
For those who are first-generation Americans, the thrill of living and reliving the Declaration of Independence still retains its glamour. Often their parents left other lands expressly for larger liberties and opportunities, and for the most part were not disappointed. In this new land their children were born without the bondage of class limitations, were given unprecedented opportunity to rise and progress and even to shape their adopted country’s future. Those who dismiss these characterizations as “built-in patriotic prejudices” need to remember their own more distant past. The American founders gave their very lives to shape a haven for those ideals that should bless oncoming generations and nourish the hopes of multitudes around the globe. Such a heritage is not a matter of verbal heat; it is the index to national and cultural health.
Our hopeful appraisal is not intended to suggest, however, that the biblical ingredient in American culture is currently in full bloom, and that our people automatically absorb some kind of Christian fragrance from their environment. As it does almost everywhere else in the twentieth century, the acrid smog of sin and sham penetrates American society. Not everything about this nation is admirable; much, in fact, is superficial and even shameful. But the real essence of America is still its historic climate of beliefs. It is this essence which nourished a nation of world distinction, a nation whose best traditions still hold the promise that even in these days its citizens will recover needed spiritual and moral resources to lift the weak, furnish new motivation to the listless, and set a fresh example of dedication to durable realities. If we fail here, the American mind, already lapsed into an American mood, is doomed further to becoming merely an American madness.
To desire a Christian nation is always a proper Christian objective. But to desire a Christian government is something else again and is to be regarded with suspicion. A government’s best approximation of Christian ideals comes by its assuring equal justice under the law for all citizens and protection for their God-given freedoms. A government that acknowledges its servant role as a minister of justice and operates in the spirit of the theistic affirmations of the early American political documents will aim to preserve and protect the liberties of all, not simply of some, or even of the many. In such an atmosphere voluntary religion—the only kind worthy of the name—can thrive.
To rely on legislative coercion or upon public institutions to advance and protect the cause of true religion is to misunderstand both the function of the state and the task of the church. Christianity depends ultimately neither upon the state nor upon culture; the Gospel is neither a state-religion nor a culture-religion. The church does not derive its authority and mission from the state, and the state does not derive its authority and mission from the church. Both are “under God,” and each has its divinely appointed task. When both state and church enthusiastically and properly fulfill their respective tasks, then we may expect a secure destiny for “the land of the free,” even in an age of cannibalistic totalitarianism.
Tax Exemption And Church Political Activity
The disallowance of tax exemption to the Fellowship of Reconciliation has stirred sympathizers to threaten an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court unless the Internal Revenue Service corrects this “absurdity.” Letter writers are asking IRS to explain its distorted thinking; they picture the denial of exemption as a trial balloon which, unless punctured, could waft away all religious exemptions.
But what are the facts? The government considers the Fellowship of Reconciliation ineligible because its disarmament objectives can be achieved only by legislative commitments; in other words, the movement is essentially engaged in political activity. This verdict accords with the group’s concentrated efforts toward the congressional vote.
Churches have historically enjoyed tax exemption because they engage not in a political crusade but in a spiritual mission. The reason is clear enough, then, why spokesmen for church institutions which engage increasingly in direct political activity (lobbying, endorsement or disapproval of specific legislative proposals, and so on) consider themselves threatened by the case in point and are ready to file supportive amicus curiae briefs if the matter reaches the courts. Some of their concern is doubtless legitimate. For one thing, should government claim the right to define what is and what is not religious activity, it may imperil religious freedom by imposing an unacceptable view of the function of the Church. By such procedure the state could soon swat any troublesome gadfly out of existence. As we know, the totalitarian powers—both Nazi and Communist—soon came to regard any church that protested government policy as engaging in non-religious affairs. Yet in proclaiming the revealed principles of social justice and civil order, the Church dare not hide the relevance of these imperatives to the contemporary crisis simply because some local tax collector senses that the Church thereby influences the realm of political life.
But is the Fellowship of Reconciliation issue really vital to the churches? Churchmen who defend the movement argue in two different directions. Some contend that “peace” is the fellowship’s main concern, that it is not a lobbying committee, and that its success in no way depends upon congressional action. Others recognize that this kind of plea for immunity might cost the churches the right to “meddle in politics.” They argue that although many problems of social justice can be solved only if the Church promotes legislative solutions (rather than regenerative spiritual dynamisms), yet the Church’s main concern is not on that account achieved through legislation only. But revenue officials are not convinced. Despite FOR’s spiritual or moral motivations, they say, and despite its partial orientation to non-legislative mechanisms, the achievement of its objectives depends nevertheless upon legislative commitments.
Income tax regulations stipulate an organizational and an operational test of eligibility for exemption. No exempt organization is to engage in activities outside its exempt purposes except “as an insubstantial part of its activities.” If “more than an insubstantial part of its activities is not in furtherance of an exempt purpose,” the exemption is to be disallowed. There may be ambiguous elements here, such as the precise definition of “insubstantial,” and whether revenue experts propose to measure either the purposes of an organization or its methodology, or both. The Council for Christian Social Action, for example, which gets 1.9 per cent of the budget of the National Council of Churches, spends its main energies in forms of political action.
Whatever the ambiguities may be, however, the treasury rules are clear enough to warn any church agencies concentrating in political activities that they do not qualify for tax exemption on religious grounds. If such church agencies wish to concentrate in political concerns, they ought to do so by the financial support of interested partisans—as FOR is currently doing (with voluntary gifts that more than offset the loss of exemption); they ought not to deploy church funds to partisan interests nor expect taxpayers indirectly to defray programs which they may not care to promote at all, or at least do not wish to promote through the churches.
To disallow exemption to the Fellowship of Reconciliation does not actually jeopardize all institutions whose social objectives bear on legislation. The Christian religion has a necessary stake in law, and church members have a political duty that includes the criticism of poor laws and the advocacy and support of good legislation. But this participation is quite different from direct involvement in political action by the Church as an institution. Some religious groups have gone so far as to approve or disapprove particular candidates—in fact, have stopped little short of indirectly promoting a religious political party. Were the Catholic Church to sponsor a Catholic candidate, such groups would be first to protest. If the Church is really concerned for its true mission, it will not discourage but will welcome a warning about proper and improper ecclesiastical involvement in politics.
U.S. Government Aid Funds Steeped In Religious Compromise
The foreign aid program seems to be meshing United States policy abroad into religious entanglements that most Americans would consider unconstitutional and imprudent on the domestic scene. Some congressional as well as some church leaders are voicing a growing demand for critical review of these involvements.
The Peace Corps is by no means the worst of the offenders. On the whole its record of achievement and service is remarkably good, even if it reflects the curious confidence that human need is best resolved by a program of governmental response. Where the Corps commits volunteers to service in religious schools and agencies abroad, it defends itself against any compromise of church-state separation on the ground that such assignments are in fact made by foreign governments that are not bound by our conventions. But this flexibility which accommodates American-supported programs to an “in Rome do as the Romans” philosophy is subject to three criticisms. First, the United States is under no obligation to offer its programs where our own traditions are inoperative. Second, such concessions on our part weaken the will and power to resist further and wider commitments. Finally, religious compromises abroad become precedents at home for those who seek to exploit public funds for sectarian purposes.
The United States’ foreign aid program is now so riddled with compromises of our own church-state traditions as to merit thorough review. Under public protest AID at one time publicly withdrew its policy of commitments through church agencies, commitments enthusiastically ventured by an influential complement of Roman Catholic staff officials. But the practice continued nonetheless. Finally a new policy was announced which left so many unresolved problems that AID is widely reported to be “in business (objectionably) as usual”—that is, to be operating overseas on a policy of religious involvement that would incur forthright criticism at home.
In matters of education, the Senate subcommittee on education was told recently that the United States now pours more funds into educational institutions abroad—religious schools included—than at home. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, accordingly, wants a full administrative disclosure of such expenditures abroad to religious schools, a disclosure that some congressmen state privately would lead to explosive congressional debate. In one instance $500,000 was reportedly given to rebuild a Jesuit school destroyed by fire in Ecuador, while in nearby Colombia (where foreign aid funds are committed to government schools) Romanist pressures consider the Protestant schools illegal and at times close them down.
Another complication is that numerous Protestant groups abroad which champion church-state separation for the United States willingly accept money from foreign governments. In the Congo, for instance, virtually all Protestant as well as Roman Catholic mission schools receive subsidies from the Congolese government.
Religious involvement, in other words, is not exclusively a compromise involving the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Many Protestant foreign mission boards and agencies are compromised, and not all of these are “ecumenically minded”; independent evangelical enterprises are involved also. There are Protestants who criticize Peace Corps workers in Roman Catholic enterprises but consider it special divine providence when these workers help in Protestant pursuits. One disturbing factor is that national church leaders abroad often stress that church-state involvement has long been their own heritage under past British or some other rule, or that the Christian movement in their countries has been reared under a church-state philosophy that permits and encourages government subsidy of religious and non-religious schools alike. Missions leaders in the United States often insist that it is proper to take cooperative account of these traditions. Hence they would not limit government commitments in those lands to non-religious schools but instead would encourage distribution on a non-discriminatory intra-religious basis. Sometimes American mission leaders abroad who contend that such religious aid by the United States is a moral-sociological-financial necessity cannot reconcile it, however, with this country’s church-state practices. Further complications arise because treaty-making powers are considered to have legal precedence over domestic church-state policy; accordingly State Department policy often proceeds by rules quite different from the constitutional precedents of our domestic scene. To say that the State Department is encouraged in these matters mainly by a colony of Georgetown University foreign service graduates is an exaggeration; the hard-core influence is more likely a group with little interest whatever in sectarian religion.
One encouraging development is the emergence of a conference of Protestant leaders of various denominational and interdenominational alignments to review this involvement of government aid in religious institutions and agencies. One of its concerns is to prevent compromises abroad from becoming leverage for compromises of church-state separation at home. This group will also scrutinize both the prevalent notion that “the First Amendment doesn’t apply overseas” and the ambivalent application on the domestic scene of the principle of church-state separation. And it will try to propose regulations that guard churches and missions from the compromises and involvements which undermine both American political philosophy and a sound policy of Christian benevolence.
A Pontiff’S Love And A Council’S Anathemas
In his final hours of life, men marveled at the strength of Pope John’s heart. Prior to that they had marveled at its warmth. In a hate-stricken age, men heard gladly from an open Vatican window a heartbeat of compassion. The Pope had spoken his pleas for peace and Christian brotherhood in tones both convincing and compelling. Perhaps history’s most universally beloved pope, he evoked compliments even from Communists. Accessible and tradition-shattering, he embodied for many the deep-rooted longings of men of good will for the unity of mankind.
At the same time, his policies had many critics. His friendly overtures to the Communists gained for him the title “Red Pope” among some conservative Italian Catholics disturbed by the recent Communist election gains in that country.
John XXIII undoubtedly was largely responsible for a fresh spirit of charity which created happier church relationships. Churchmen were surprised to see Protestant observers admitted to the secret deliberations of Vatican Council II, undoubtedly the one great overshadowing event of John’s short pontificate.
Yet for all the good will, the basic theological differences bestriding the road to unity remain. Pope John was not a theologian; his emphases lay elsewhere. But he never spoke of compromising basic Catholic dogma. He did not share the modern, sentimental fallacy that doctrine is a costly irrelevancy which serves to block unity. Even in rejecting birth control, he said, “There cannot be any adoption of erroneous doctrine.…”
The New Testament couples love with truth, and Paul asserts that love rejoices in truth. Here is the challenge to separated Christians. Revealed truths are of eternal consequence. Doctrines Protestants hold to be biblical and basic were anathematized at the Council of Trent. Rome has since reaffirmed the anathemas.
A pontiff’s love and a council’s anathemas.… We hope the former is replaced, but it cannot restore unity of the Church until the latter are displaced.
Bible And Prayer Ruling A Signal To The Churches
Sometime this month the Supreme Court will hand down its ruling on the legality of Bible readings and prayers in the public schools. Religious leaders who view the Church mainly as a weather vane, anticipating the direction of Court decisions and cushioning their communions against outbursts of emotion, need a reminder of the Church’s larger role. The time has come as never before in American life to exhibit the power of voluntary religion and to give vital content to theistic affirmations distinctive of our political documents.
In a recent sermon Dr. Edward L. R. Elson reminded his congregation in Washington’s National Presbyterian Church:
A secular nation is not what we were at the beginning. Then we said it was God who gave us liberty, God who brought forth the nation, God who hath preserved us a nation.… We are a theistic people.
This has been and I trust will continue to be a nation under God. There is an unfinished task. No matter what General Assemblies pronounce or courts adjudge, we must find new and better ways of increasing the depth of the God-conscious reality and creating symbolic actions whereby we teach this truth to our children and witness to the whole world the divine sovereignty over this nation as well as over individual man and the corporate life of the Church.…
If we are to eliminate religious exercises in public schools and prayer in public ceremonies like Congress and civic ceremonies we must find and soon find ways of involving the whole people in public symbolic acts attesting that we are a theistic people even though not a theocratic state. If symbolic acts do not presently have deep meaning, let us invest them with deeper meaning—not abolish the acts.
One fact is sure. When the Supreme Court gives its decision, the Church’s task will only have begun. The burden of the Christian community will be heavier, not lighter, than before.
Ecclesiastical Controls And The Preservation Of Christian Liberty
The freeing of the human conscience from the dictates of an ecclesiastical hierarchy can be considered as one of the most precious fruits of the Reformation. Men learned that God alone is Lord of the human conscience; it is responsible only to his authority. Ecclesiastical authority is to be obeyed only so far as it is conformed to the revelation of God’s law, which is the inspired Scriptures. God set the human conscience free from all obligation to believe or obey any judgments, opinions, or commandments of men which are either contrary to or aside from the teachings of the Word.
The Roman Catholic Church has maintained that the Church, and not the Scriptures, is the true standard and organ of the will of God. The Church has the power to enact laws in God’s name, binding the consciences of men. The Reformation denied that God had given that power to the visible Church, and it freed men from ecclesiastical domination. Unfortunately, church control over the wills of men seems to be returning to Protestant circles. The pressure of small but effective controlling groups has been subtle but nevertheless effective. Policies formulated by a few are forced upon an acquiescent majority, who little realize that they are forfeiting a heritage of liberty.
The Reformers foresaw the possible return to such a deplorable bondage and sought to prevent it by carefully worded creedal statements. One of the best expressions is that found in the Westminster Confession of Faith and incorporated in the Constitution of the United Presbyterian Church:
God alone is lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XX, Section II).
One of the Westminster divines who helped to frame the above statement on freedom of conscience was Samuel Bolton, minister of the Word of God at Southwark, England. He wrote a treatise on the subject entitled: “The True Bounds of Christian Freedom” (London, 1645). His plea to preserve liberty is well worth studying, and we quote it in part:
Certainly, it is the highest piece of slavery and vassalage in the world to yield up our consciences to the will of any, or surrender up our judgments to be wholly disposed by the sentences, determinations of any.
Christian liberty is a precious jewel, suffer not any to rob you of it. Let us never surrender up our judgments to our consciences to be disposed according to the opinions, and to be subjected to the sentences and determinations of men. Let neither power or policy, force or fraud rob you of this precious jewel.
Be not ensnared and overwhelmed by the policies of men. We are warned to take heed none deceive us, Eph. 5:6; Col. 2:8; 2 Thess. 2:3, as if it were in our power to prevent it. And so it is, we cannot be ensnared but by our own default. We often betray away our liberty when we might maintain it, and so become the servants of men. And this ariseth either from weakness of head or from wickedness of heart. It is my exhortation therefore that those who are the freemen of Christ would maintain their Christian freedom, as against the law, so against men. Be not tempted or threatened out of it; be not bribed or frightened from it; let neither force nor fraud rob you of it. We often keep it against force, and lose it by fraud. To what purpose is it to maintain it against those, who are the open oppugners of it, the Papists, and such as would take it from us, and give it up by our own hands, to them perhaps that seek not for it? Nothing is more usual, and therefore beware.
Give not up yourselves to the opinions of other men, though never so learned, never so holy, because it is their opinion (1 Thess. 5:21). It often falls out that a high esteem of others for their learning and piety, make men to take up all upon trust from such, and to subject their judgments to their opinions, and their consciences to their precepts. Men will suspect a truth if a liar affirm it, and therefore Christ would not own the devil’s acknowledgment of him, when he said, Thou art the Son of God; but they are ready to believe an error, to give credit to an untruth, if an honest and faithful man affirm it. Whatever such men say, it comes with a great deal of authority into man’s spirits; and yet it is possible for such men to mistake.
It is a most dangerous thing to have man’s person in too much admiration, as the Apostle saith, Jude 16. Paul tells us that we know in part, 1 Cor. 13:12. The best are imperfect in knowledge. The most learned, and holy Martyrs, every man hath need of his allowance; they are but men, and in that subject to error. Though these things may afford probable conjectures, that what they hold forth is a truth, yet these are not infallible evidences. Indeed, there is much to be given to men of learning and piety; but we must not tie our boat to their ship, we must not, as the phrase is, pin our faith upon their sleeves. We must not subject our judgments, resolve our faith into their authority. This is to make men masters of our faith; this is a thread of that Garment, whereby Babylon is distinguished; a mark of the Roman Anti-Christian Church. To resolve our faith into the authorities of man, and though it be not required of you, yet it is no less done (though more finely done) by many, than by those of whom such implicit faith, and blind obedience is required.
END
Economic Growth And The Gospel Of Christ
Our political leaders speak much to us these days concerning economic growth. One cause for lag which they do not generally mention and thus do not confront is mental illness. Cornell University’s Alexander Leighton, professor of social psychiatry and anthropology, told a United Nations conference in Geneva that economic growth is slowed because perhaps as much as 30 per cent of the world’s population suffers from mental disorders.
When one ponders the awful darkness represented here, he may be staggered. But what of the other 70 per cent? So many of these lack the light of truth which shines from the face of Christ that one trembles for a benighted globe. All our inventive genius notwithstanding, this is not the day for liberal optimism. May the Church rather face up to earth’s desperate straits and cast forth the light of the Gospel as the only answer—even unto the day Christ comes in glory and irresistibly annihilates darkness with a new heaven and a new earth.
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Statistics show conclusively that church membership in the United States is not keeping pace with population growth. Allowing for variations in the methods of ascertaining these figures and agreeing that church membership and the individual Christian’s spiritual health may be separate, still one may say that compared with the past, the rate of spiritual growth is not keeping up with the national birth rate.
That this is true in a country so richly favored by God and with so many churches and church activities should shock all of us into a willingness to take stock of our personal commitment to the Lord and our stewardship of the grace so richly given. Furthermore, it should cause the corporate church to take stock of her own faithfulness and stewardship.
Many causes for this decline will be brought forward. Some will insist that the Church has lost her influence because of her many divisions. They offer as the solution the “reuniting of Christendom,” with church merger after church merger—all with a concentric trend towards one great Church.
One wonders, though, whether the decline in ratio of church members to general population can rightly be blamed on the multiplicity of denominations. The average individual is little concerned about the organization of the church. In fact, he sees the church in terms of the Christians he meets and the personal and church-centered efforts to reach him as an individual.
Is it not axiomatic that the elemental impact and continuing influence of the Church depend, not on her organization, but on the messages from her pulpits and the dedication of those who claim the name of Christian?
Yet it is at this point that there is the greatest evasion today. There are many who for the sake of an outward unity play down the inevitable spiritual unity which exists among those who know and love the Lord and try to serve him. Such persons insist that the Church can present an effective united front without corresponding convictions on the very content of the faith itself.
To this writer there are some discernible reasons for the decline of the Church and some questions which need answers.
For centuries the Church was composed of men with a Book. The full integrity and authority of the Word was questioned only by those on the fringes of the Church and those openly hostile to it. Today a new generation of “priests” has arisen, leaders who in their composite attacks leave little more than the covers of the Book.
Human reason, intellectualism, and unbelief have combined to sit in judgment on the divine revelation with disastrous results. The opinions of men have been substituted for “Thus saith the Lord,” so that from a host of pulpits those in the pews hear the opinions of the latest writers and most popular scholars. One wonders whether the words of Jeremiah do not apply to us today: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” (Jer. 5:30, 31).
Again: “And the Lord said to me: ‘The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds’” (Jer. 14:14).
Again: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes; they speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord’” (Jer. 23:16).
But Jeremiah does not content himself with denunciation; he has the answer from the Lord. “Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord. Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who use their tongues and say, ‘says the Lord.’ Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the Lord, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them; so they do not profit this people at all, says the Lord” (Jer. 23:28–32).
The writer would use these words to warn all of us—Christians who live lives utterly inconsistent with their profession, ministers who preach anything other than the Word of God.
The Church losing ground! Surely the fault lies within us. We have permitted the people of God to be infiltrated by the world and its lust. We live in a time of unspeakable moral declension and find these lowered standards seeping into the visible body of Christ, to the point where the worldling cannot distinguish between those who are members of the Church and those who are not.
Ezekiel takes up the warning to those who speak in the name of the Lord: “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel, prophesy and say to those who prophesy out of their own minds: “Hear the word of the Lord!” Thus says the Lord God, Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!’” (Jer. 13:1–3).
The basic problem of a declining Church is her failure to face up to the sin problem and to God’s cure for sin. Words such as “conviction,” “repentance,” “confession,” “renunciation,” “cleansing,” the “person and work of the Holy Spirit” have almost vanished from many vocabularies. We have become obsessed with humanism and have made it a substitute for Christianity. We have placed reformation ahead of regeneration even to the point where there is no longer a distinction between the redeemed and the lost—just those who are saved and know it and those who are saved and do not know it.
Although church membership is certainly not the ultimate index in God’s sight, it nevertheless is an indicator on which many implications rest.
We are constrained to believe that the Church is losing membership and influence because only too often she is ceasing to be the Church: she is becoming instead a political organization dedicated to world betterment without reference to soul betterment, to political pressures instead of the power of the Holy Spirit, to humanism rather than Christianity itself.
What shall it profit if the Church becomes instrumental in solving every problem of human relationships, every injustice and inequity of society, every material need—only to find that men are still estranged from God and know not his Christ?
L. NELSON BELL
Eutycfius Ii
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Embarrassment At Yale
They tell me that this is a true story: a professor in a seminary started out his chapel invocation, “Oh Lord, you probably noticed in the morning paper.…” Well, He probably did. In like fashion with the late Will Rogers, that’s most of all I know, too.
I saw in the papers that some boys at Yale University “got religion.” They had all kinds of a flurry about it, but no one was more flurried than chaplains, preachers, and the like, because these newcomers to the faith were coming up with such things as “speaking with tongues” and sundry other gifts listed authoritatively by Paul in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. I am not too clear now, nor was I too clear even then, about the report that chaplains, preachers, and the like were recommending to these poor fellows who “got religion” that they had varied problems—father images, neuroses, academic pressures, international crises, and so on. Everyone was a little jumpy about these manifestations of the Spirit in spite of the fact that all would doubtless avow that “the Holy Spirits works when and where and how he pleases.”
It reminds me of what happened to George Fox. He was having religious experiences and sought out the direction of his church advisors. They helpfully suggested that he needed physic or chewing tobacco. He ended up by founding the Quaker church instead. John and Charles Wesley and some of their buddies were nicknamed “methodists,” and the only thing wrong with them was that they were acting like Navigators, Young Life, or Inter-Varsity Fellowship. The old-time religions couldn’t stand them.
M. G. Kyle said, “We all pray for the Holy Spirit and when the tongues of flame appear we all run for the fire department.” Most college campuses have all kinds of ways for dealing with sinners (they even ignore them) but are greatly confused when a saint appears. There is an interesting phrase: “those who love His appearing.” It is a good one for the testing of a church, a college, or a society.
Durable Dialogue
Your articles are very informing and timely—especially the first two in the May 10 issue, “What I Don’t Understand About the Protestants!” and “What I Don’t Understand About Roman Catholics!” Dr. Geoffrey Bromiley’s article, excellent in itself, contains much that the average layman will not understand. Somehow it is hard for learned men to descend to the level of the common man.
However, aside from that fact, this year is, in my humble opinion, the time to analyze the differences between Romanism and Protestantism.…
Omaha, Neb.
This is what I don’t understand about Catholics. With Cuba in the Communistic camp along with other European Catholic countries and with a real vital threat of Latin American Catholic countries with certain European countries going Communistic: Why the intelligent Catholics do not recognize that their type of religious culture produces the type of mind that is conducive to Communism? And why they do not do something about it?
In spite of all these facts they attempt in America as fast as they can to produce the type of religious mind that is conducive to Communism. And in spite of all their efforts by talk to discredit Communism they do nothing in actual fact.
On the other hand with all these facts staring them in the face, I cannot understand why any responsible Protestant religious leader would even think of talking union with Catholics.
United Presbyterian Church
Campbell, N. Y.
I am distressed to read the two articles. I am an apostle of freedom of speech, but I think this implies responsibility—i.e., the “speaking the truth in love” of which St. Paul speaks. Each of these articles cries to high heaven for the gift of charity.…
For 500 years Protestants have tried to get along without the richness of Catholicism and Catholicism has tried to survive without the dynamic of Protestantism—each needs the other—we have much to give and more to share, and it is high time we talked about these things and not our apparently insuperable differences.
Church of the Nativity
Pittsburgh, Pa.
What does Dr. Bromiley mean, “we don’t understand the Catholics”? We understand Catholics all too well! Anybody who has a smattering of church history should understand Catholics. Luther certainly understood Catholics … Huss understood Catholics, Wycliffe understood Catholics, our missionaries to Catholic countries in South America understand Catholics. Converts to Christ from Catholicism understand Catholics and the Roman church and want no parts of it.… It would be well if the evangelicals of our time would open their eyes to the prophetic significance of the Bible and recognize that all this breathless hunt for some kind of agreement and understanding … is not of God nor of his Christ.
Lockport, N. Y.
I was so appalled by the obvious historical ignorance of Mr. John J. Moran in his article of what he doesn’t understand about Protestants that I would simply reply—he doesn’t understand anything about Protestants or Catholics.
Any college graduate or faithful member of the Roman church who could make such a weird statement as “My church has never decreed to call itself the ‘Roman’ Catholic Church” is actually ignorant of the Council of Trent and of any official documents of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps we should be unhistorical and call the Roman church the Latin or Italian church and then he would not need to think of wearing a toga!
The reference to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City as a Protestant church is as fantastic as if I were to refer to the Pope of Rome as a Muslim.
I’m sure you will hear from many other Anglicans who do understand the Roman church quite well; we simply pray for her and forgive her for her ignorant laymen who don’t want to understand anyone!
Saint Mark’s Church
South Milwaukee, Wis.
“My Church has never decreed to call itself the ‘Roman Catholic Church,’” Moran writes, and further, he denies that his church teaches “that Protestants wind up in hell.” These two statements can be answered by just one quotation from The New Mission Book, imprimatur John J. Glennon, Archbishop of St. Louis. At page 390: “There can be no salvation for those, who, through their own fault, are out of the Church of Christ, the Holy Roman Catholic Church … as long as he deliberately refuses to obey God to become a child of God’s holy Church he cannot enter into heaven.”
L. H. SAUNDERS
Toronto, Ont.
Protestants and Catholics do not understand each other because they are never permitted to talk to each other officially about their faith. It is only by frank and open discussion—debate if you will—that problems in this realm, as in any realm of life, are to be resolved.
Union Methodist Church
Totowa Borough, N. J.
We Episcopalians do not believe that our fathers left the Catholic Church. Our forefathers severed themselves from Roman jurisdiction and Roman ecclesiasticism, and restored to the Church then existing in England, the independence which it enjoyed as the British Church before the bishops of England submitted to the Pope at the Council of Hertford in A.D. 673. We believe that the Catholic creed and the Catholic tradition in essence, without Roman innovations, continued in an unbroken manner from the “Ecclesia Anglicana” which had an organized hierarchy of bishops as early as A.D. 314 before the Pope sent his emissaries to England. It is for this reason that no member of the official Anglican communion denies the fact that he is a Catholic—Anglican Catholic—not Roman Catholic. If any member of the Anglican communion does deny this fact, he is ignorant of the official teaching of his church and the facts of history substantiating this claim, or he is identifying “Catholic” with “Roman Catholic” to which he does not wish to subscribe.
St. James Church
Batavia, N. Y.
It is absolutely necessary to identify the papacy-dominated brand of Churchianity as Roman Catholic in order to avoid confusion with the more inclusive term “Holy Catholic Church.” The Holy Catholic Church is comprised of individuals, irrespective of racial, religious, or denominational background, who have been made alive spiritually by the marvelous experience of the New Birth.
Also the Holy Catholic Church has such a wonderful Head: “God has appointed Him (Christ) universal and supreme Head of the Church” (Eph. 1:22, Weymouth Translation).
Lancaster, Pa.
I believe, with Mr. Moran, that Cardinal Newman was one of the greater religious thinkers of the nineteenth century. But, as an Anglican, I feel obliged to question his statement that he was “one of the great minds of the Anglican church.” I do not question his intellect, but I do question Newman’s commitment to Anglican doctrines. By his tracts written while he was the vicar of St. Mary’s, Oxford, Newman showed that he had rejected the Reformation which claimed to return to Christ and the apostles for its teaching, and instead was embracing the erroneous doctrines of the Middle Ages.
Wheaton, Ill.
Moran dismisses the whole question of image worship with the words, “We do not, of course.” The Reformers were perfectly well aware of the Roman distinction between “worship” and “veneration.” John Calvin goes into it at some length in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chapter xi. They also knew that the arguments used by Romanists to explain that their “veneration” is not intended for the statue, but for the person represented, were used by Celsus to defend paganism and were refuted by Origen in the third century. The point is that for the men of the Reformation, these subtleties were not adequate grounds on which to ignore what seemed to them plain prohibitions of the Word of God.
I think that CHRISTIANITY TODAY should be praised for its attempt to promote inter-confessional understanding. Still in all, Mr. Moran might have been more qualified to write an article entitled, “What I Don’t Understand About Roman Catholicism.”
Boston, Mass.
I have [heard of a Protestant being excommunicated], A bishop in one of the larger denominations was excommunicated in Cleveland back in about 1926. And speaking of my own church, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, if any member would deny any of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion and would refuse to recant and repent, he would, after proper brotherly admonition, be excommunicated.
Immanuel Lutheran Church
Youngstown, Ohio
I think the two articles … were the greatest waste of four pages I have ever seen in a Christian publication. I don’t see why a magazine of this caliber should bother with the elementary, juvenile, and beside-the-point opinions of either of these two men.
Watertown, Mass.
The Episcopal Church is entirely and completely Catholic—as is the Roman.
Priest (ret.)
Episcopal Diocese
Greensboro, N. C.
There are many reasons [that keep high church Episcopalians from taking that one further step back into Roman Catholicism], such as: “allowing one’s baptism to be questioned,” or “denying valid Bishops, Priests, and Deacons”.… As long as the Roman Catholic Church denounces Anglicans it ought to be easy to understand.
Philadelphia, Pa.
American Baptists
We have been asked to communicate the following action which was taken at a joint meeting of the Council of State Secretaries and Council of City Secretaries, held in Detroit, Michigan, on May 12.
These groups represent the administrative areas of the American Baptist Convention. Present and voting were twenty-five of the total of thirty-three state secretaries, and seven of the total of twelve city secretaries.
Here is the excerpt from the minutes of that meeting:
“It was moved by Joseph Heartberg of New Jersey and seconded by Clifford Perron of Minnesota that the State and City Secretaries of the American Baptist Convention, meeting in joint session at Detroit, Michigan on May 12, 1963, go on record as follows:
1. We recognize Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, Secretary of Evangelism of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies, as a responsible Christian thinker and a conscientious and dedicated American Baptist leader.
2. We hereby protest the publication of a statement in the article “Spring Thaw for Baptists” in the April 12, 1963, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY to the effect that only two of our secretaries favor the retention of Dr. Morikawa as director of Evangelism for the American Baptist Convention; and we further protest the fact that the statement was made without any previous inquiry to the respective state and city secretaries concerning their point of view.
3. We also hereby call upon CHRISTIANITY TODAY to publicly withdraw the above-mentioned statement since that statement was based upon incorrect information.
4. We request the respective secretaries of the State and City Secretaries Councils to send copies of this resolution to
a)The Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY
b)The General Secretary of the American Baptist Convention
c)The Executive Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies
d)Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa
This motion was passed unanimously.”
JOHN CRAIG, Sec.
Council of City Secretaries
NICHOLAS TITUS, Sec.
Council of State Secretaries
ANGUS HULL, President
Council of City Secretaries
CARLTON SAYWELL, President
Council of State Secretaries
American Baptist Convention
Valley Forge, Pa.
• CHRISTIANITY TODAY is glad to register this protest, though (1) the protest does not indicate the current measure of support for Dr. Morikawa among the secretaries; (2) the qualities described in section 1 of the motion were never called into question in our story; (3) the report which we recorded spoke only of state secretaries. But other evidence has been discovered which indicates the report was inaccurate as to the number of state secretaries cited.—ED.
Your correspondent correctly reported the substance of my response to a question about Nels Ferré asked at Northern Seminary’s recent Evangelism Conference. However, quite understandably, he could not give the whole context. For the sake of your readers, in deference to those who have written to me, and especially in fairness to Professor Ferré, let me make a distinction which I made on that occasion.
There is a universalism that denies the divine judgment and believes that at death all men go to heaven. There is also a universalism that believes in hell and judgment but refuses to believe that the divine judgment is eternal and believes that God’s will to salvation will not be ultimately and irrevocably frustrated. Professor Ferré belongs in the latter group. I was correctly quoted as saying that fellowship should not be broken over disagreements as to the duration of the divine judgment in the hereafter.
Andover Newton Theological School
Newton Centre, Mass.
Thank you for the articles and other pieces in CHRISTIANITY TODAY which are dealing with the present spread of universalism.
Some of us are concerned at the way it seems to be spreading like a forest fire. Though some of our leaders may sneer at your significant answers to this ungodly doctrine, be assured that there are many who are grateful.
K. AART VAN DAM
President
Baptist Ministers Council of Wisconsin
Of the American Baptist Convention
Neenah, Wis.
A Good Question
I have lingered over the article “Why I Stayed in the Ministry” by Douglas A. Dickey, of Williamsport, Indiana (Mar. 29 issue). I like this kind of talk. I always devour these articles, hoping, I suppose, to find some encouragement for my own hopes of becoming a preacher. I do find a great lesson in these backgrounds, these experiences of men of faith who labor to bring their people closer to God, closer to a realization that this life has more to offer than sticks and stones and toil every day. By strengthening their people, they must strengthen themselves, for they certainly show a great fortitude in staying with it.
Yes, I want to be a minister. It is a feeling I have never been able to shake. And I have tried. I’ve fought against it with deliberation, but I always wind up with the feeling of “someone” standing over in the corner smiling at me with patience and forgiveness. I’ve listened to all the “anti” arguments. I’ve even made up a few myself. The pay is low, often inadequate. I’m piled up to here with debts that haunt me and taunt me. I don’t have the educational background, and the idea of an almost 45-year-old attending a college while he has a growing family to look out for is not—in my present circumstance—an encouragement, or a solution to anything. No higher educational institution is in my background, true, but I’ve always felt that the various extension courses so readily available today can help a body overcome his lack of formal education.
And I haven’t exactly been standing still these years I’ve been living. I’ve made an effort to keep my learning in pace with the times. It has been as “liberal” as any I would have gotten in college. Discussion and application, review and reapplication are constant companions in my radio advertising work. And of all the “hard knock schools” few can equal the radio business for its all-around “curriculum.”
“Your witness as a layman is an effective one many times,” I have been told. There have been many encouraging words spoken about some of my broadcasting. One lady wrote me to say, “I feel as if I’ve been in church after hearing your program.” Another told me that “eleven of our young folk made their decision to join the church last night, and every one of them received their encouragement to do so from your talk to our group last night.…”
These … compliments … are a great blessing to my heart. But the truth is, my lay witness does not satisfy me. Where do I go next? I must sit back and wait for the next invitation. My preparation for the next time is haphazard, general—because I don’t know where it will come from, or what it will be for.…
I would like to pastor a small town church. And it should be one like Pastor Dickey described, where the saints are patient and understanding, encouraging and long suffering flounderings of a beginner. I’ve lived and worked in small towns before, and I have for the most part been comfortable in them. In one small town, I was a teacher in the men’s Bible class in a Methodist church, was a commissioned lay speaker for the conference. I also aided in the organization of a Baptist congregation, became its moderator, and supplied its pulpit until a regular minister was called. They rewarded me with a license when I left the town to take another job.
From these two vantage points, I could see the influence exerted by many of the young people who were going off to college, into the service, or to jobs in the cities nearby and far away. They took something of the solidity of close family and friendship ties with them, and many of these were molded in their church life.
In the small town, too, you have a greater opportunity to become an active member of the community, not just a passive voter. What you do in a small town is important, or perhaps that importance is magnified by proximity. Anyway, I feel, the ministerial influence can be more readily felt in the small town. The church is more central to the life there.
So the question comes up—where do I go from here? I’m frankly looking for some suggestions. Is the shortage of ministers we hear so much about not yet great enough for a denomination to aid and abet the furtherance of a man’s desire to answer the call to serve his God and fellowman? Must every beginning preacher be qualified for a doctorate before he is allowed in a pulpit, to administer the sacraments, baptize, marry the living and bury the dead?
I want to preach. So, where in this great land is the opportunity for a 43-year-old family man? Where is that conference or convention or church that will allow this one to answer the call—that will be patient and understanding of his shortcomings?
Have sermons—will travel!
Warrenton, Va.
Origins
I have become a trifle impatient with colleagues and friends who cast disparaging remarks upon the historic Christian position, while failing to realize that if it were not for this vast and powerful force much of what they now have would be nonexistent. While I do not call myself a fundamentalist—though time was when I did—I strongly suspect that evangelical Christianity is largely responsible for the vast majority of men in the clergy today. May I propose that CHRISTIANITY TODAY make a survey—and not just of its subscribers—to ascertain what per cent of men, even though now “liberal” in theology, had a conservative background. I strongly suspect that even yet it is these local congregations which are largely to be given credit for opening up vistas with conviction, presenting the professional ministry as a vital alternative to choose. I further suspect that the prevalent preaching—and I speak strictly as a layman, knowing something of what laymen really want to hear—of many of our pulpiteers, lacking clarity and force, accounts for the dearth of young men seriously considering the ministry as a life work.
Alma College
Alma, Mich.
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It was just a little less than thirty years ago, at the time the dollar was devalued, that Franklin D. Roosevelt announced as the objective of government policy a dollar that would over the years purchase the same quantity of goods; that is, a dollar whose value in terms of purchasing power would be stable. The ideal was that you could invest dollars today—in bonds, notes, savings accounts, insurance—and be sure that those dollars would be worth just as much in the market twenty or thirty years hence.
Yet it is obvious to everyone that this objective has not been attained, and is not likely to be attained. In respect of spoilage, or deterioration, a bundle of greenbacks is different only in degree from a head of lettuce.
When coinage was developed by the Greeks about seven hundred years before Christ, the minting appears to have been done by the temple authorities.… The temples, we may assume, had a tradition of pure coinage, since only a pure metal, like an unblemished sacrifice, would be acceptable to the god or goddess. In the case of the Jews, the purity of the metal was elevated into a moral question. The Mosaic law forbade adulterating goods or tampering with weights and measures. Thus the devout Jew was forbidden to wear garments of mingled wool and linen; he was forbidden to sow his field with mixed seed, or to crossbreed, say, an ass with a mare. While concerning metals the prohibition is not explicit, we may assume that alloying metal was likewise forbidden. The Mosaic law also laid down the principle of honest weights—a moral achievement with which the world has not yet caught up. “Just balances, just weights; a just ephah and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God”—so ran the Mosaic command (Lev. 19:36).
Now the devout Jew was also required to pay the temple dues of half a shekel a year. The temple half-shekel was a weight of silver. We have no record of Jewish half-shekel coinage except for a small amount struck during the days of the Jewish Revolt and the final destruction of the Temple by Titus in A.D. 70; but we may gather from the fact that around the temple there were money changers, that the temple authorities did not allow the Jew to pay his temple dues of half a shekel except in coin containing pure metal.
Among the Roman Caesars and secular authorities, such moral prohibitions did not exist, either upon the maintenance of the purity of the coinage or upon its weight. Both were subject to change at the edict or whim of the emperor. The denarius as originated by Julius Caesar was a coin of practically pure silver equivalent to ten pieces of copper; whence its name denarius, meaning ten of copper. The coin had not been long in circulation, however, before succeeding Caesars found it expedient to alloy the coin with an increasing amount of copper while retaining its legal tender value. This, of course, meant a profit to the imperial mint. The emperors, always pressed for revenue, became adept at adulterating the money. By the time of Gallienus Caesar the silver denarius had been so debased with copper that the silver was only a thin wash. Thereafter it was converted to a copper coin pure and simple. No longer subject to debasement by alloy, its value was reduced by reducing the size and weight of the coin. The denarius became so small that it resembled a pebble, which the poor, whose garments apparently were not equipped with pockets, often carried about in their cheeks.
In addition to debasing the coinage, the Roman emperors introduced certain practices which have become familiar in recent years: having variable exchange rates and purchasing powers according to various political purposes. Denarii could legally be tendered at a certain rate in discharge of commercial debt, but at another rate—a lower one, of course—for taxes; while for foreign trade it had a third rate, its bullion value. In imperial payments the same accounting prevailed in reverse order; thus silver denarii were paid to the legion at the rate of one to ten of copper whereas for the public the rate was one to sixteen. Later, when the denarii became little more than copper, pure metal coins were struck for army pay and debased coins for other purposes. The imperial mints deliberately mixed a certain proportion of plated coins among the more honest, and all had to be accepted at the official rate.
The inevitable results of these practices were a continued inflation, a disappearance of good money, and what would be called in these days a balance-of-payments problem. The high-living Roman ladies demanded silk from China which sold literally at its weight in gold, spices from India, ivory and peacocks from Africa. Good gold and silver had to be shipped out in increasing quantities. Meantime, the empire was no longer expanding, and the government was running out of slaves to send to the silver mines of Spain and the gold mines of the Balkans. The government increased the minting of debauched coinage for domestic trade. The ultimate effect was economic disintegration. This went along with social decay and political and military impotence. Speculation in commodities drove prices higher and goods into hoarding. The final stupidity of the Roman emperors was to establish a system of price ceilings. It was in A.D. 301, just before the final collapse of the Roman Empire and its division into two halves, that the Emperor Diocletian issued his famous price-fixing decree as the last measure of a desperate sovereign.
Only portions of this decree have come down to us—fragments here and there turned up by archaeologists—but enough to reveal it as one of the most unusual documents in history. The discovery of parts in the farthest corners of the empire confirms its widespread application, and the language of the preamble reveals in words most explicit both the terrible degree of economic collapse and the basic superficiality of Roman economic philosophy. The decree, by the very completeness of the list of articles whose prices it regulated, must have been felt in every village and countryside in the imperial domain. The prices of all articles of trade, from a measure of beer and a bunch of watercress to a piece of genuine purple silk and bars of pure gold, and of services, from the shaving of a man or the shearing of sheep to the fees of a lawyer for presenting a case, were set out in detail.
The price-fixing decree of Diocletian was a failure and was abandoned within five years. From the economic crisis of the third century, largely induced by a corrupt money, the Western Roman Empire never recovered. By the fourth century money had fallen to the degraded position of “ponderata,” when it was customary to assay and weigh each piece offered in payment. And by the seventh century, the weights themselves had been so frequently degraded that it was no longer possible to make a specific bargain for money. There was no law to define the weight of a pound or an ounce and no power to enforce the law had one existed. Under these circumstances money became extinct. Nor, we are reminded, was it the only institution that perished; all institutions perished. There was no government except the sword; there was no law; there were no certain weights and measures; exchanges were made in kind, or for slaves, or for bags of corn, or for lumps of metal, which men weighed or counted to one another, holding the thing to be sold in one hand and the thing bought in the other.
No more fittingly can we close this comment on the failure of the Romans to cope with money than by quoting the words of one Antoninus Augustus, cited by Del Mar: “Money had more to do with the distemper of the Roman Empire than the Huns or the Vandals.” The paradox of history is that in the eastern half of the Roman Empire after the second capital was established on the Bosporus in the fourth century, a different monetary tradition governed which was marked by a strong moral sense of the responsibility of government toward money. The Eastern Roman Empire came again under Greek influence as it had always been largely Greek. In Athens, nine centuries before, had occurred the first official debasement of money of which history gives record. Solon, the noted lawgiver, had come into power as a compromise candidate during a great commercial crisis resulting from land speculation and an accumulation of mortgage debt. Solon, like Roosevelt in a later period in history, attempted to meet that crisis by a series of monetary manipulations. He solved the farm problem by a decree abrogating all the farm debt; then, to assist the distressed mortgage holders he allowed them to write down their obligaions by paying them off in drachmas of reduced weight. The drachma was officially devalued by 26 per cent. The device seems to have been successful for a time, but evidently it revolted the Greek conscience, for thereafter magistrates were required to include in their oath of office the promise not to tamper with the coinage. From then on a tradition of pure coinage and maintenance of the weights and standards became traditional among the Greeks. When Constantine established his principal capital in Byzantium this Greek influence came to the fore, and among the Constantine reforms was the establishment of a new monetary system based upon the gold coin subsequently known as the bezant. It is a remarkable tribute to the genius of the Byzantine Empire that this coin was never debased in the course of 700 years, and it is to the purity of this coinage that many students of Byzantium attribute the remarkable vitality and vigor of that empire. The German historian Gelzer may be quoted: “By her money, Byzantium ruled the world.”
I have dwelt upon the Roman experience with money because we are inheritors of the Roman tradition: Roman monetary practices continue to infect the monetary system to this day.… When the Federal Reserve System was established in 1913, the law permitted the reserve banks to issue currency and deposit credits roughly to the extent of two and one-half times the amount of actual gold held by the banks. In 1946 the limit was raised to permit the banks to issue money and credit to the extent of four times the amount of gold held, and a bill was introduced in Congress last session, and has already been reintroduced this year, to abolish the requirement entirely and thus permit the reserve banks to issue an unlimited amount of money and credit against the amount of gold held.
The process does not end here. The money or deposit credit which the banks hold at the Federal Reserve banks is reserve to the commercial banks against which they may in turn create deposit credits which, according to the location of the bank or the category of the credit, may range up to as high as twenty times the amount of the reserve carried with the reserve banks. Thus the situation today is that for the banking system as a whole, outstanding monetary claims in the form of currency and demand deposits are of the order of $145 billion, to meet which the Treasury holds a gold stock of less than $16 billion. This is not the end. By what is known as the gold exchange standard, foreign central banks count deposits in United States banks as the same as gold. This is because the Treasury, at least so far, will redeem gold claims presented from abroad at par; that is, it will pay out gold at the rate of one ounce for every $35. This has been an expensive process: it has drained out some $8 billion, or over a third of our gold stock, in the last dozen years. I have not been able to compute the total of monetary claims on the world’s gold stock, but the amount is fantastic.
It takes a keen student and a mathematician to determine just how much the money today is adulterated, for money managers have become adept in developing various devices to conceal the exact status of the currency. Thus, the Treasury figures for official gold stock do not mention that they include $800 million of gold borrowed from the International Monetary Fund from 1956 through 1958. In addition, last year the Federal Reserve and the Treasury entered into a number of so-called swap arrangements by which, in effect, they obtained from various foreign central banks the equivalent of over $1 billion in exchange for a super convertibility guarantee, which means that another billion in gold must be set aside to meet these obligations. These devices are too abstruse for the ordinary citizen to follow, even for some astute bankers.
Without knowing precisely the extent to which it has been hoodwinked and defrauded, the general public is becoming increasingly suspicious of what passes as money and is showing an increasing eagerness to get rid of money in favor of objects of known worth. Among those substances of actual wealth with the greatest certainty and stability of value are the precious metals, gold and silver. It is paradoxical that the two countries of the world which historically stood for personal freedom and the right of individual property, the two wealthiest countries in the world, namely the United States and Great Britain, are the only two countries in the free world whose citizens are forbidden to hold or to own monetary gold. In the United States this prohibition has been recently tightened and extended to include the holding of gold not only at home but abroad, and the Treasury is beginning to look with suspicious eye at objects of art in gold. Before long they may be looking into the mouths of taxpayers for hoarded gold.
I have long urged the view that a principal cause of social and political unrest in Asia and Latin America has been the depreciation of money, which has been accelerated by the action of governments in withdrawing silver money from circulation and substituting flimsy, depreciating paper money. The process began around the turn of the century and was encouraged by American money doctors who went around the world prescribing various forms of managed money to cure all economic ills.… The United States, which invests billions annually to promote stability in underdeveloped lands, could travel further in this direction if it would by precept and by example encourage these governments to abandon managed money and paper currency and to return to good silver coinage, both as a medium of payment and as a standard of value.—Excerpts from an address by Dr. Elgin Groseclose before The Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C.
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In the idiom of the New Frontier, I am called an “ultra conservative.” I accept the nomination—provided the title denotes one who tries humbly to follow the trail leading from tyranny to freedom which was hewed through government oppression by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and the other pioneers of our republic. They raised a “standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” a standard which retains its integrity because it is rooted deeply in religious faith and eternal principles.
The elements of this standard are: First, man derives directly from the Creator his rights to life, to liberty, and to the unhampered use of his honestly acquired property, and thus he is not beholden for them to any human agency; second, to protect his rights he joins with others to establish a government, whose powers are carefully limited and clearly defined in order that they may not be used to usurp the rights they are designed to defend; and third, for man to grow in wisdom and worldly possessions, he must have freedom of choice, a free exchange for ideas as well as for material goods. These rights are to be used without hindrance, so long as the possessor does not interfere with the rights of others.
Transcending all is the conviction that for every God-given right there is a collateral responsibility to use that right in strict conformity with the moral law, as revealed in such statements as the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule. When man’s appetites are disciplined by such inner restraints, he can establish a society which will require a minimum of external police power to maintain public order, and this, in turn, leads to a maximum of individual freedom.
On this solid foundation, our founding fathers erected the social order which became a haven for the oppressed and down-trodden of the earth and a beacon of hope for those who could not escape to our shores. While there was never a dearth of compassion and material help for the needy in our land, the major emphasis was always on opportunity, rather than on relief.
In this climate of freedom, our nation became the world’s cornucopia of spiritual and material blessings. Over the years it has poured out its abundance for the needy everywhere.
But in recent decades our people have been subjected to an unceasing barrage of allegedly “new” ideas. With increasing frequency, and most recently by our President, we have been told that the ideals of the founding fathers are “out-moded,” that their admonitions are “incantations from the forgotten past, worn out slogans, myths and illusions.” Individual moral responsibility to God and to one’s neighbor has been called a “cliché of our forebears,” and we are instructed that this generation must “disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truism and stereotype.” We are urged to discard the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors and the time-tested traditions of Western civilization as useless impediments because the State now takes full responsibility for its subjects’ welfare.
Unfortunately, many of us have yielded to these seductions. We have surrendered the solid substance of freedom for the illusory promise of security. In doing so, we have permitted the structure of our free society to be weakened and its foundations eroded so that there is grave danger of collapse.
All of us must share the blame for this debacle. Over the past fifty years we have participated in the propagation of a misplaced faith in the ability of government to accomplish any material, economic, social, or moral purpose. Implementing this faith, we have thrust enormous powers on government, or we have stood by meekly while government has seized authority at an ever increasing pace and has centralized it in Washington, far removed from the control of those from whom it was obtained. Such enhancement of political power at the expense of individual rights is correctly labeled “socialism.”
The tendency of citizens in all walks of life is to be complacent about government intrusion that does not encroach upon what each one believes is his own domain. We are apathetic about the general socialist drift. Frequently, we support collectivist measures which, it is claimed, will “promote the general welfare,” or will “stimulate the economy of the community” where we live. But we should now be aware that we are threatened by total State Socialism, an ancient tyranny under a modern disguise. If we are to survive as a nation of free men, we must oppose socialism with all of our vigor wherever it appears. If our sole concern is that aspect of socialism which affects directly our own business, our own industry, or our own community, we will contribute to the advance of State Socialism on other fronts by our neglect, and thus weaken the entire structure of freedom.
It is said that the people never give up their liberties except under some delusion. We have been surrendering our liberties under the delusion that government has some superior competence in the realm of economics, some magic multiplier of wealth, some ready access to a huge store of economic goods which may be had without working for them—merely by voting for them.
None of us is completely immune to these delusions or to the human passions aroused by the four horsemen of our own apocalypse—ignorance, fear, apathy, and greed. Nevertheless, those who see the inevitable end of this progression are duty-bound to sound the alarm.
The great iniquity of our times is that so many are trying to tell others how to live their lives. They ask, plaintively, “How can we do good for the people if we just let them alone?” As for me, “I’m fed up to here” with so-called “master minds,” with statesmen, clergymen, schoolmasters, and politicians who, though frequently unable to administer the affairs of their own small households, have no doubt of their ability to spell out, in detail, the what, when, where, and how that 188 million Americans and countless other millions throughout the world must do to have a more abundant life!
“I’m fed up to here” with pseudo-statesmen, whose wishbones are where their backbones ought to be, who are past masters of surrender, compromise, appeasement, and accommodation, who believe we can buy friends like sacks of potatoes, who fawn upon, cajole, and pamper our enemies and the so-called “unaligned” nations while they kick our time-tested friends in the teeth, who shiver and shake when “world opinion” is mentioned, who would depend upon United Nations mercenaries to protect the security of these United States, who never become surfeited with Soviet lies and deceit, who believe that the next time Khrushchev will surely honor his commitment, and who hold that the Russian Bear will soon change his claws and fangs for olive branches and rose petals!
“I’m fed up to here” with the wiser-than-thou, self-anointed oracles who insist that differences of opinion on foreign policy should stop at the water’s edge and that free Americans must not criticize programs conceived and implemented by our “no win diplomats” who, over the past thirty years, have racked up an almost unbroken string of losses to Communism throughout the world; with those who would trade American lives, limbs, goods, and services for Communist promises; with those who believe that the Castro Communist Cancer has now been excised from the body politic of the Western Hemisphere; with those who are determined to democratize the Katangans even if it is necessary to kill them and destroy their property in the process; and with those who insist that we must subsidize, with massive foreign aid, arrogant socialist and Communist governments all over the world, though while doing so we help their dictators enslave their peoples.
“I’m fed up to here” with Robin Hood government that promises to rob the rich to pay the poor (in return for votes) and, when there are not enough rich left to pay the bills, robs both rich and poor alike to pay Robin Hood; with those who would tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect in the expectation that the day of reckoning will come after they are gone; with candidates who run on a platform of “I can get more from the government for you,” without reminder of what the government must take from you; with officials who use defense contracts as instruments of political advantage; with politicians who think that a relief check means as much to an American as a decent job; with government agencies which harass our industries with anti-trust suits, threaten them with loss of government contracts, dictate their economic decisions on costs and prices, resort to biased interference with their labor relations, burden them with punitive taxation and regulation, or tempt them to conform by promising lucrative contracts. What do you think Khrushchev would give to have General Motors, Dupont, General Electric, U. S. Steel, and Lockheed on his team?
“I’m fed up to here” with businessmen who are so busy making and selling widgets at a steadily decreasing profit that they have no time or energy left to fight for preserving the system that makes their business possible; who do not protest government intimidation and interference; who support socialist projects of short-range advantage to themselves; who finance foundations, schools, churches, cultural activities, news media, and political parties which expound and promote socialist doctrine; or who “play ball” with the political apparatus in power when there is a potential “pay-off” in the form of subsidies, loans, or contracts.…
We can have the kind of government we demand! Let us demand what history has taught us is right for us! Our fighting men and women in legislative halls throughout the land will win, provided we give them the support they must have to regain our lost freedoms!—Admiral BEN MOREELL, CEC, USN (Retired), in an address to the Fifth Human Events Political Action Conference in Washington, D. C.
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Faith as used in the Bible means far more than just believing or understanding. St. Paul tells us that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And so if we would have faith in the biblical sense, we must first accept Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and then, through the working of the Holy Spirit, make our will subject to God’s will. Once an individual has achieved faith, Christian freedom results from the exercise of that faith.
All of our so-called freedoms stem from Christian freedom. Without Christian freedom, no freedom is possible. Freedom therefore is indivisible. Freedom can exist only in a state whose people generally accept honesty, truth, fairness, generosity, justice, and charity as a rule for their conduct. If the people of a state accept instead bribery, guile, cupidity, deception, selfishness, and dishonesty, then the strong exploit the weak, might becomes right, and anarchy stalks the land. Freedom for the individual under such conditions is no longer possible. But honesty, truth, fairness, generosity, justice, and charity are the attributes of Christianity. Thus, if we would have freedom, we must first have faith in God.
St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians admonishes us to “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” In 1790, John Philpot Curran, the great Irish patriot, enunciated the same principle when in a speech to his constituency he said: “The condition under which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”
Liberty, therefore, is a Christian concept, but people must first have faith in God before they can enjoy the blessings of liberty, for God is the author of liberty. Then they must fight for the preservation of that liberty. Their failure to do so is a crime, the punishment for which is servitude.
From the first until the fifteenth century liberty was rare, because the people either were lacking in faith or were unwilling to fight for their liberty. During this period there was little or no material progress; each generation lived just as did its forebears. Population was controlled by the amount of food that could be produced, and a large percentage of the people died of starvation. Then in the fifteenth century came the Reformation. Under the Reformation men’s consciences were freed. Thereafter they were able to exercise their genius, initiative, and ingenuity. Machines gradually increased the productive capacity of labor on the farms. One hundred and fifty years ago it required 90 per cent of the American people to produce sufficient food to maintain our population. Today 8 per cent of the American people produce more food than our entire population can consume.
For over a hundred years freedom flourished in our land. When I graduated from college in 1900, America truly was the land of opportunity. Had the government at that time been disposed to control our economic activities, as it does today, the oil industry to which I have devoted more than sixty years of my life might well have been an entirely different industry than it is. Let me tell you something about the development of the oil industry and its companion, the motor car industry, and speculate as to what might have been the attitude of a national economic planning board back in 1900, if one had existed at that time, toward these industries.
At the time there were being operated in this country some 8,500 motor cars, consuming approximately 85,000 barrels of gasoline a year. That is just about enough gasoline to keep the cars of today on the road for between one and two minutes. Now let us imagine Mr. Ford, with his great vision of the automobile’s future, appearing before that board and asking that in their program for the next decade they provide a few billions of dollars of capital, along with the necessary labor and material, for his industry. The board would have recognized in Mr. Ford a mild lunatic. They would have asked him where he expected to get the gasoline for all those cars and would have pointed out that neither the gasoline nor the crude oil from which to make it was anywhere in sight—and they would have refused Mr. Ford’s request. A sophisticated public would have laughed at Mr. Ford while the board set down genius as insanity and inventive ability as lunacy, and that would have ended all foolish talk about horseless carriages and flying machines.
But fortunately for the forty million families in this country who today derive pleasure and satisfaction from the operation of their cars, there was no such board in the year 1900. And so Mr. Ford, not worrying about where his gasoline was coming from, went right ahead building more cars and better cars, until presently he was turning out more than a million cars a year.
It was fortunate for those in the petroleum industry, also, that there was no such board, for they too went right ahead drilling more wells and deeper wells and sometimes finding oil. They brought technology to their assistance in the form of geology and geophysics and thereby discovered new oil fields. And so the oil industry, doing each year those things which would have been impossible the year before, was always able to keep just a step ahead of the thirst for gasoline of those multiplying millions of automobiles.
The first telephone was installed on the White House desk of General Grant. After he had talked into his end of the wire and listened to the answering voice until he was thoroughly satisfied that the thing really would work, he leaned back in his chair and said: “Yes, it is truly remarkable; but who in the world would ever want to use one of them?” Now, General Grant was quite a man. He won a great war and was twice President. But I submit that this incident justifies the gravest doubts about the wisdom of any economic planning board which he might have appointed—and as President, according to our present-day planners, he would have had to appoint just such a board.
The richest story of them all is one I ran across in a report put out by the Patent Office Society. About the middle of the last century, it was proposed in Washington to construct a new building to house the Patent Office. The congressional committee called in Mr. Ellsworth, who was then the United States Commissioner of Patents, and asked his advice. Commissioner Ellsworth counseled against too large or too expensive a building, because invention had just about reached its limit. He related the astounding advances that had been made in the mechanical arts during his lifetime and predicted a cessation of activity in the field of invention—there just wasn’t anything else left to invent.
At this point I made a little investigation of my own, and I found that up until Ellsworth’s time there had been taken out in this country some 3,327 patents; since then, however, almost three million patents have been granted—just a little increase of some 90,000 per cent. So much for that one government official, who undoubtedly would have been a member of the national economic planning board if one had existed at that time. But Commissioner Ellsworth was not so illiberal as are most of our modern planners. He didn’t believe there could be many more inventions, but in any event he did not propose to suppress them.
American industry under freedom has raised the standard of living of the American people in a way which was undreamed of even one hundred years ago. But freedom has also been responsible for great progress in the field of medicine. Let me illustrate by telling you the story of Ephraim McDowell.
One hundred and forty years ago Ephraim McDowell was a practicing physician in Danville, Kentucky, then a small hamlet on the edge of the wilderness. A few days before Christmas he was summoned sixty miles to see a patient, a Mrs. Crawford. The local doctor had told her that she was pregnant, but after ten or eleven months had passed, her condition became so alarming that Dr. McDowell was called into consultation. He diagnosed her case as ovarian tumor. No surgeon had ever dared operate in such a case, because it was popularly believed that any contact of the outside atmosphere with the interior of the abdominal cavity meant certain death. But Dr. McDowell had long believed such an operation possible, and he persuaded Mrs. Crawford to let him do it. The operation had to be performed at the doctor’s home, where he had all of his surgical equipment, and so Mrs. Crawford accompanied him on horseback the sixty miles back to Danville, suffering excruciating pain at every step.
When the village learned of this unheard-of operation, feeling ran high against Dr. McDowell. The people were determined to stop the operation, either by law or by a mob, if necessary. But Dr. McDowell was undaunted. Even though he knew the operation might result in the death of his patient—and certain death to him if his patient died—nevertheless he was prepared to take the risk.
The operation was performed on Christmas morning. When the services in the local church were over, the people gathered in front of the doctor’s home with a rope around a tree, prepared to hang him just as soon as the patient died. Becoming impatient, they tried to break into the house but were stopped by the sheriff. All this was before the development of anesthesia, and the story has it that Mrs. Crawford sang hymns to drown out the pain while the doctor worked. Despite the yelling of the patient on the inside and the howling of the mob on the outside, Dr. McDowell performed the first abdominal operation in the history of medicine. Mrs. Crawford not only survived the operation but lived to be over eighty years of age.
Today the operation for appendicitis alone saves over a million lives per year. What do you think would have been the attitude of a government medical board 140 years ago toward such an operation? And what do you think would have been the status of medicine today if during these last 140 years medicine had been socialized throughout the world? I suspect it would be just exactly what it was before Dr. McDowell performed that amazing operation.
When he was eighteen years of age, Galileo, attending his devotions at the Pisa Cathedral, watched the caretaker stand on the side of the nave, draw the chandelier toward him, and then after lighting the lamp release it. Galileo was fascinated as he watched that great chandelier swing in a great arc over the nave. Then with his pulse he calculated the elapsed time for each swing and was amazed to find that as the arc of the swing was reduced, the elapsed time remained constant. This is the principle employed in most of our reliable clocks of today. A clock in which the length and weight of the pendulum have been accurately adjusted will keep perfect time.
Subsequently, Galileo discovered the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, and an infinite number of mathematical formulas, and made many other scientific discoveries. He was the first man to prove that the earth is a globe and revolves around the sun, and he also worked out the equinoxes. That the moon revolves around the earth—in fact, much of our knowledge of astronomy—was first discovered by Galileo.
But instead of giving him the acclaim which he had earned, the Church accused him of heresy. The Church felt impelled to take this action because it assumed the responsibility for all economic, social, and political activities. It had accepted Aristotle’s erroneous concepts of astronomy, but it could not now change its position: to do so would admit that the Church was fallible. And so it was decreed that Galileo had violated the Holy Scriptures, and, under threat of the most terrifying forms of the Inquisition, he was compelled to recant and was banished from his country. Thus was ended the usefulness of the greatest scientific mind ever developed in the history of the world.
Today most of our Protestant denominations have lobbyists in Washington who on behalf of their thirty or forty million members are dictating to our senators and congressmen the kind of legislation which should be enacted on almost every conceivable economic, social, and political subject. Now, I submit that unless this is stopped, the time is not too far distant when we will have a Protestant inquisition—twentieth-century pattern—which will rival in effectiveness the Roman Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages.
The truth is that no planning authority could possibly have foreseen, planned, and organized such an amazing spectacle of human progress as the world has witnessed right here in this country during the last hundred years. No trust or combination—ecclesiastical, private, or governmental—could have accomplished it. This foresight could have been achieved, but only if there had been a wide-open invitation to all the genius, inventive ability, organizing capacity, and managerial skill of a great people—nobody barred, no invention rejected, and no idea untried.
Everyone must have his chance, and under our American system of free enterprise and equal opportunity, everyone gets just that chance. It is our freedom that has brought us to this high estate—intellectual freedom, religious freedom, political freedom, industrial freedom—freedom to dream, to think, to experiment, to invent, to match wits in friendly competition—freedom to be an individual. That is our great American heritage. With so many political witch doctors abroad in the land teaching Communism, Fascism, planned and dictated economies, governmental paternalism, and all the other isms, I urge you to guard well that heritage and to turn a deaf ear to all their sophistries. When a people come to look upon their government or their church as the source of all their rights, there will surely come a time when they will look upon that same government or church as the source of all their wrongs. That is the history of all planned, dictated economies. That is the history of tyranny. To each of us is assigned a part in the great drama of life, and we can play our parts with the greatest measure of perfection only as free, unhampered individuals. Surely it is not thinkable that in the light which shines through this twentieth century, a great progressive people will be beguiled into turning back to the ways of controlled economies and dictated social programs.
I believe that the Church is the only institution that can save this country from Communism. The reason for this is quite simple: Communism is atheistic—the Church is Christian; the one is the very antithesis of the other. The Church must inculcate in the minds and hearts of its people that God alone is the Lord of Creation. When the Church takes its stand that man is a creature of God, it denies the very concept of Communism.
Communism, crime, and delinquency are not caused by poverty, bad laws, poor housing, or any other economic, social, or political condition. They are caused by sin. The only way to eradicate sin is by the redemptive power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church is God’s instrument to carry the Gospel to man.
In one of his great sermons Dr. McCartney told of an old Saxon king who set out with his army to put down a rebellion in a distant province of his kingdom. When the insurrection had been quelled and the army of rebels defeated, he placed a candle in the archway of the castle in which he had his headquarters. Then, lighting the candle, he sent his herald to announce to those who had been in rebellion that all who surrendered and who took the oath of allegiance while the candle still burned would be saved. The king offered to them his clemency and mercy, but the offer was limited to the life of that candle.
We are all living on candle time. While the candle still burns, let us accept Christ as our Lord and Saviour. Let us by our life and witness spread the Gospel. And let us through faith acquire Christian freedom, which alone can make this country a better and a finer place in which our children and our children’s children may live and work.
There is a little poem which illustrates what I have in mind far better than any words of mine could. It is entitled “The Bridge Builder.” I have long since forgotten the name of its author.
An old man traveling a lone highway,
Came at evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm deep and wide,
Through which there flowed a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
For the sullen stream held no fear for him.
He turned when he reached the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man!” cried a fellow pilgrim near,
“Why waste your strength with your building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
And you never again will pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm deep and wide,
Why build a bridge at eventide?”
The builder raised his old gray head,
“Good friend, on the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet will pass this way.
This stream which has meant naught to me,
To that fair-haired boy may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim.
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.”
WE QUOTE:
COMPROMISING PROTESTANTISM—I am troubled that the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of my own denomination could have found it appropriate to join in an attempt to draw American Protestantism into one of the more enervating aspects of ecumenicity that promises, at least for the next decade, to consume its already flagging energies. When one thinks of all of the decisive issues confronting the United States in the world today, what seems to be required is a fresh articulation of the prophetic ethos and of the transcendent sensitivity that once characterized Protestantism.—Professor PAUL LEHMANN, Harvard Divinity School, “Protestantism in a Post-Christian World,” Christianity and Crisis.
ON THE CHAPLAINCY—Several years ago I was called upon to do a bit of research into the history of the Army and Navy chaplaincy in the United States. There have been efforts in the past to abolish this function of the government on the basis that it violates the principles of separation of Church and State. History clearly proved, however, that the separation principle was never intended to abolish religious practices or services within government activities; it was the establishment of a national Church (such as the Church of England in England, for example) that was in the mind of the framers of the Constitution when they wrote, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The movement against the chaplaincy collapsed.… That there has been no religious coercion by the Government in the past is certainly demonstrated by the fact that minority groups, Christian and non-Christian, are flourishing as never before. It surely cannot be maintained that by supplying chaplains the Government is attempting to force religion on its soldiers, sailors, and airmen.… If our present Constitution doesn’t give us the right to express our faith in God, nationally, then it is time for us to amend this document so it does.—Professor WILLIAM SANFORD LASOR, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.
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In the area of man’s social and political concerns there is hardly a more agonizing question facing the world today than the question of war and peace. Other questions recede into the background when this one is asked, because this one affects not merely the quality of our corporate existence upon earth, but our very existence itself. With the discovery of nuclear energy and the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb there has come into the hands of men a power able to scorch the face of the earth and to destroy or mutilate all life upon it. If states were to resort to war, and in the course of it employ the thermonuclear power they now possess, they would be able to exterminate each other and in the process involve all or the greater part of mankind in death. This means that when today we seriously put the question of war, we place ourselves upon the very brink of history where yawns the abyss of global chaos. Standing there we are able to hear with new clarity and understanding the words our Lord once spoke to Peter: All who take the sword will perish by the sword.
Hearing the prophecy, we can hardly fail, of course, to hear the accompanying command: Put your sword back into its place! And having heard this we are bound to inquire into its relevance for us. Teetering on the brink of racial suicide, we are compelled to ask: If Christ’s word about perishing is likely to be realized in our own life and time, must his command to lay up the sword be heeded when we formulate our current plans and policies? Is it possible that history has carried us to the point at which contemporary states are required to appropriate to themselves the imperative once addressed to Simon Peter? Is it possible that in this atomic and space age, with its eschatological nuances and forebodings, Christian states are required to eschew violence just as in the first century, with Gethsemane all about him and Christ’s cross looming before him, Peter was required to sheath his sword? Is it perhaps the case that wars are no longer a moral possibility, and that they must be renounced even though without them nothing can be expected but a crucifixion? Does the Christian way in this twentieth century lead straight from the abyss through renunciation to the cross?
The pacifist has a ready answer to these questions, and his answer may at long last be ripe for adoption. I myself, however, do not speak out of his tradition. Although I hold that war is never to be glorified and that it always witnesses to man’s sin, I acknowledge that man’s participation in war can be dictated by a genuinely Christian obedience and concern. I do not concur, therefore, in the pacifist’s unqualified condemnation of violent coercion. Historic pacifism fails, I think, to reckon sufficiently with the demonic powers active in historical existence. It also tends to misconstrue the nature and function of the state. And it unwarrantably divorces love from justice, thereby robbing love of its hard core of responsibility. I prefer, therefore, to approach the question of thermonuclear warfare from the side of those who have traditionally held to the legitimacy of war and have elaborated in its support the “just war” doctrine.
God’S Purpose In Government
According to this doctrine the “governing authorities that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 1:1). This is taken to mean, not that God sanctions every possible political administration or regime, but that he does not countenance anarchy and wills the establishment of governed states. It means that it is God’s will to place men under the governance of responsible magistrates whom he authorizes to rule in his name as his appointed ministers. In this view it is the task of the state, not to usurp the place of other structures within society, such as the home, the school, and the church, but to establish a just political order within which human lives can flourish in accordance with God’s creative and redemptive purposes. Since human life can flourish in accordance with these purposes only when men are free to meet their obligations, the state is called upon to recognize and guarantee these necessary freedoms. These freedoms do not have their origin in the state; they flow from mankind’s moral task and are rooted in God’s command. But the state has been established to secure them, and it is obliged to defend them against perversion and attack.
To this end the state is armed. A sword has been put into its hand by God himself for the maintenance of order and for the punishment of evildoers. The sword is necessary because the world is evil, and because sin, expressing itself in anarchy and lawlessness, continuously threatens the state and jeopardizes the freedoms requisite to the full flowering of the moral and religious life. This lawlessness must, in the name of love and justice, be held in check by the coercive power of the state; and when the lawlessness is armed, it must be countered with a force sufficient to render it inoperative. From this it follows that a police force must be maintained, and also a military establishment, for there are not only lawless citizens but also lawless states bent on disturbing the order of justice within which human society was meant to flourish. Against these the state may take up arms, sometimes in redress of grave injury and wrong, more often in defense of another’s right to freedom and self-determination, always in response to an unprovoked attack upon itself.
What Of Thermonuclear War?
This, in its bare essentials, is the traditional case for the just war, and it is, I judge, in substance sound. Nevertheless, this doctrine does not do what some men think it does. It does not justify every war, nor every kind of war, nor every way of conducting a war approved on independent grounds. Although the doctrine sanctions war in principle, it does not sanction war in general. I dare say it does not sanction a general thermonuclear war at all. Indeed, if what the scientists tell us is even approximately correct, it is questionable whether a general thermonuclear war can, in the traditional sense, be called a war at all. It can better be called a meaningless holocaust, which no amount of theological subtlety or ethical ingenuity can justify. If a general thermonuclear war is able to scorch the earth, destroy all or the major part of the technical, cultural, and spiritual treasures of mankind, and annihilate the human race or all but a maimed and wounded fragment of it, as many responsible scientists allege, then a general thermonuclear war is simply impermissible, whatever the provocation. If a Christian must choose between a “war” like this and slavery or martyrdom, then it is slavery or martyrdom he must choose. No Christian may take part in the mad and wicked act of racial suicide and undertake to put an end to human history.
I understand that there are some Christians, nevertheless, who declare that they would rather be dead than Red. I am able to put a good construction upon their words and in this way to agree with them. But if they mean to say that anything and everything is preferable to existence under Communist domination, even the destruction of the planet and the annihilation of its inhabitants, then I quite emphatically disagree with them, and in any case deny their right to act in accordance with their preference. And if they suppose that a total nuclear war can be justified solely as a means of testifying to the worth of transcendental values like freedom, truth, and goodness, regardless of what happens in the realm of historical existence, then I also disagree with them. It is not Christianity, but only romanticism, that could induce a man to fight a war with no historical goal in mind or beguile him into thinking that heaven is served by devastating the earth. A war makes sense when it can honestly be regarded as an effectual political instrument serviceable to meaningful social ends. When it cannot be so regarded, when it does not achieve or envisage a lasting peace settled on the foundation of justice, when it does not intend or effect a righteous and stable political order within which concrete human values are preserved and fostered, and when it destroys the very community in whose interest it was fought, then it makes no sense at all and cannot exact a Christian endorsement.
If it could be demonstrated, as I suppose it cannot, that if it comes, the war we dread will be of the sort here contemplated, then we all—the traditional proponents of the just-war concept and the pacifists—could make common cause and declare our intention not to fight. We could then urge the government to scrap its nuclear missiles and the whole range of its atomic armament, and agree to deliver ourselves into Mr. Khrushchev’s hands. I do not now advocate this course of action. One reason is that not repudiating war in principle, and not knowing that even an atomic blast cannot be contained and localized, I cannot determine a priori what premium—in terms of limited war—I am entitled to pay or to invite others to pay, in order to insure that freedom and self-determination, and the religious and moral values underlying these, shall continue to exist upon the earth. Another reason is that our existing armaments appear to act as effectual deterrents of Communist aggression and as preservers of the peace. Moreover, the United States is the guardian of the freedom of many smaller nations, and she is the ally of several larger nations with whom her fortunes are intertwined. For her to proceed to unilateral disarmament would be to deliver not only herself but the whole world into Russian hands. This cannot be right.
There is no way out of our terrible impasse but multilateral disarmament. Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly plain, to the Russian people no less than to ourselves, that the world cannot continue to live in the dread shadow of the bomb. Although the possibility of its limited use cannot be apodictically denied, it is very unlikely that if war breaks out, it will be put under any restraints. But in that case a frightful judgment will fall upon the earth and unspeakable devastation will ensue. To prevent this terrible destruction must become and continue to be our first political concern. The best way to prevent it is to secure agreements on a disarmament plan which will give each side a reasonable assurance that faith is being kept. In the effort to secure these agreements our own country, because it is a Christian nation, must take the lead, and all Christians should encourage the government to acquire and manifest understanding of the legitimate aspirations of our opponent and to exercise such patience in negotiations as may be required to attain the desired end.
In our shrunken world the several nations simply must learn to live together. The alternative to this cannot be contemplated with equanimity. Among us, all narrowly chauvinistic sentiments should be banished, and the horror manifested in some circles when peaceful coexistence with Russia is proposed ought to be greatly tempered. To live and work together we need not compromise our convictions or ideals, or surrender our just claims, but we do need to exercise toleration and restraint in peripheral matters and concerns. When this is done, and when we are much in prayer for a world in desperate plight, some easing of the tensions in international relations can be expected.
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The question to be answered is whether a nuclear war with its massive destruction is, under any circumstances, now ethically justifiable.
The form of the question presumes that the pros and cons of pacifism itself are not involved, because if pacifism were the accepted moral attitude, then the matter of nuclear warfare would be entirely irrelevant.
War is the ultimate means by which an aggressor nation seeks to subject another country to its will. The victim has but two basic choices, to fight or to surrender. Appeasement may be a temporary measure to gain time to prepare for defense, but it never causes an aggressor to desist; rather, it encourages him to further aggression and merely postpones the decision to fight or surrender. The conflict is one of opposing wills, expressed in the clash of military arms. Any destruction beyond that believed necessary to cause the submission of the aggressor and bring about a settlement of the war issues is unjustifiable and therefore unethical. If nuclear weapons are not a military necessity, then their possession and use it certainly unethical. Their military necessity must be examined.
Even if nuclear weapons are a military necessity in preventing, deterring, or fighting an otherwise justifiable war, the massive destruction they inevitably cause to the non-combatant population may make it unethical to use them, even though the only alternative is complete submission to the aggressor. The critical factor here is the word massive. In every war some non-combatants unavoidably become casualties. Civilized nations seeking to act in a civilized manner attempt to avoid hurt to enemy non-combatants whose efforts do not contribute directly to the enemy’s prosecution of the war. In spite of such desires, loss of some non-combatants because of their proximity to legitimate military targets has been recognized as an inevitable accompaniment of war. These people are endangered because their own side elects to fight or to maintain war-supporting activities where they are. Sometimes one side will try to protect its war operations by camouflaging them as non-military. This type of action, when discovered by the enemy, makes real non-military installations suspect and therefore subject to attack. It has been generally agreed that if a country engages justifiably in a particular war, it is not fairly subject to criticism for the loss of non-combatants whose suffering is an unavoidable consequence of the effort to win the war. The principle involved, not the number of casualties, is the major consideration. In nuclear war, however, the number of civilian casualties is so great that many hold it unethical to employ atomic weapons, even though the only alternative is total submission to whatever tyranny the conqueror chooses to impose. The solution to this dilemma is found in a factor rarely considered in discussions of the matter, namely, the guilty responsibility of the great mass of the country’s population for the initiation and prosecution of a war of aggression.
The discussion which follows seeks to discover answers to the two relevant questions: (1) Are nuclear weapons necessary to a peaceable nation (such as the United States) which is endangered by another nation possessing similar armaments? and (2) Is the enemy population of sufficiently guilty responsibility for the aggression to make it a justifiable military target? A further question might be asked: Does a government have the moral right to subject its own people to nuclear war rather than surrender?—that is, as some have said, is it not better to be Red than dead?
Military Necessity Of Nuclear Weapons
Experience shows that effective weapons are never abandoned unless they become obsolete or are superceded by others of superior quality. Nuclear weapons exist today and are increasing. The two great nuclear powers are the United States and Soviet Russia. Every American knows that his government would like to secure a major disarmament of the nations, provided that an agreement to do so could and would be enforced. Apart from such enforcement, only disaster could be expected. A nation not possessing weapons is necessarily at the mercy of one that does possess them. Protracted negotiations have shown that the Soviet government will not agree to any form of disarmament inspection or security which will provide the United States adequate safety after our country honorably keeps its own part of the disarmament agreement. Experience shows without the slightest fear of contradiction that the Soviet government cannot be relied on to keep any agreement or treaty if it becomes expedient not to do so. Its imperialistic aggressions, cruelties, and treacheries are known to all who follow world events. Apart from abject surrender, there is no military alternative to the possession of nuclear weapons and the determination to use them if that becomes a last resort.
Since the United States is non-aggressive in its foreign policy, its nuclear policy is that of retaliation against a nuclear attack by Russia. Apart from our country’s ability and readiness to use nuclear weapons, the world would undoubtedly have been engaged already in major wars caused by Russian efforts to seize Berlin and the Near and Middle East (where the oil is). The Soviet backdown in Cuba was clearly the result of America’s nuclear power and its declared readiness to use this power if necessary. The dispatch of American troops to Lebanon in the middle fifties and the presence of allied forces in Berlin, backed up by American nuclear power, committed the United States both to fight for those localities and to use nuclear weapons if necessary. As far as non-nuclear forces were concerned, the Russians might have launched wars without serious risk, but the devastation to Russia itself to be expected from nuclear attack made the cost too great to risk. To date, nuclear weapons have been the major preventive of a Soviet military effort to take over localities of great importance to the security of the so-called free world. There seems to be a reasonable expectation that as long as the United States is armed with nuclear weapons, is ready to use them if necessary, and remains peaceable in its intentions, there will be no major war. The cost to Russia if it should launch such a war would overwhelmingly outweigh any advantage it could gain by victory. It is possible, of course, that some mistake or malfunction at a lower military level might fire a missile and trigger a war, but this danger is so obvious that both governments have undoubtedly taken every precaution to prevent such a disaster. It is also possible that the United States might lose its alertness and, in a Pearl Harbor attitude, invite a sudden devastating surprise blow that would defeat it at once. This, however, is only a contingency to be avoided. It is concluded that nuclear armament is a military necessity for the United States, unless it is prepared to make with finality the decision that it is better to submit to Soviet aggression and tyranny for ourselves and other nations than to risk nuclear war. Such a policy would be the result of fear, and fear has never been a good method of dealing with tyranny and aggression. Militarily, nuclear weapons are a necessity.
Guilty Responsibility Of The Aggressor
Every nation is a corporate society, the only alternative to chaos and anarchy. Since the government is corporate, its decisions are binding on the entire nation unless the nation is to disintegrate in civil strife. In relations with other nations the nation is an entity.
It is the ruler of the state who decides to launch a war of aggression, but the people fight the war. In reaching his decision the ruler considers many factors, one of the most important being whether the populace will support the war. He uses all the means available to secure such support in preparing for the war, in non-military aggression, and finally in the war itself. Unless he is confident of popular support he will not risk the war, because not only would the war be lost, but he himself would be purged from his exalted office. He would gain nothing and lose everything.
Admittedly, no one, including the Russians, wants a nuclear war. But this does not mean that moral righteousness motivates this desire. Instead, it is fear for self, not love and mercy toward the enemy. History seems to show clearly that a populace is not at all averse to a war of conquest if it foresees gain at little cost. The same lusts dominate John Citizen as dominate his sovereign (Rom. 1:18–32; 3:10–18; Jas. 4:1, 2). Peaceable nations differ from aggressors in that they may be too weak vis-à-vis their potential enemies, they may be relatively so well off that they are satisfied with the status quo, they may be involved in internal difficulties, or they may be strongly influenced by strictly New Testament Christianity. The particularization of the type of Christianity is necessary because over the centuries there have been many departures from the original precepts and doctrines of the faith, and many of the worst international crimes have been perpetrated by states which call themselves Christian. The willingness of nations to engage in conquest is demonstrated by the unremitting frequency of wars during the centuries, the greatest of them coming in this present age of science, enlightenment, and reason.
In the absence of the restraints mentioned above, it appears that all that is needed to start a war of conquest is to stimulate the human lusts adequately, giving assurance of victory at acceptable cost. In the past this has not been difficult to do, because no ruler would undertake conquest unless it appeared to him that the desired results could be obtained. If it appeared so to him, it was not too difficult to convince the mass of the people. Often, too, hatred of the intended victim would be aroused, motivated by fear of being attacked at some future time. It is true, of course, that the ruler often uses false propaganda to deceive his own people as to his real ambitions, but this does not alter the fact that they are only too ready to be deceived. A great nuclear war could not begin without ample indication of aggressive intentions. War is a last resort, and nuclear war is certainly the last of the last. Aggression and occupation of other countries cannot be concealed from the aggressor people. Soldiers and other persons in those countries tell their own families, and the word spreads. The declared reasons for aggression may be false, but the fact of aggression cannot be concealed. In a nation preparing for and carrying out aggression, only a small minority oppose their government’s policy, and even fewer do so for moral reasons. And of these, fewer still are willing to suffer for their convictions; principle succumbs to expediency. Generally most persons are indifferent to the government’s policies. A police state does exercise a certain power in this respect in that by coercive means it prevents active opposition. But such coercion actually need be applied only to those who are sufficiently determined to express their opposition actively. If the stability of the police state requires excessive coercion of its citizens, then it is highly unlikely that the sovereign will risk a war of aggression. It is safe to conclude that wars of conquest are launched by the ruler with the active or passive support of the nation, without which he would not dare to start military action. The people therefore are not innocent; they share the guilt of aggression. The true innocents—incompetents, children, and non-conformists—are exposed to danger by their own nation. In regard to these enemy non-combatants the defending state faces the same problem that it has in the past; the only difference is that the numbers are greater, the problem more obvious.
Since the bombings of World War II, and now nuclear weapons, the entire aggressor nation, guilty as it is, no longer is shielded by its armies and navies. It, the real force, the real will behind the military weapons, can be attacked directly instead of only after the defeat of its military forces. By supporting the ambitions of its ruler it shares his guilt and accepts the same risks as do the military forces themselves. Therefore such loss as it does sustain can be laid to its own aggression, not to its innocence. It is only the risk of loss that has deterred and does deter a criminal ruler like Khrushchev from launching a major war of conquest. The guilty role of the entire nation in nuclear war shows that the massive destruction to non-combatants is not the morally determining factor in the decision to resist aggression or to surrender.
Conclusion: The massive destruction caused by nuclear weapons is not an ethical bar against their use in a war justifiable by other moral considerations.
Postscript: The utter horror of nuclear war and the demonstrated inability of men to stop human crime (including military aggression) should convince all Christians that there is no hope of enduring peace until Christ shall establish his kingdom at the Second Advent.
END
Addison H. Leitch
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I have just returned from a series of meetings of the National Council of United Presbyterian Men. These area meetings, held in New York, Pittsburgh, Wichita, Chicago, and Sacramento, were attended by eight to ten thousand men (the exact total being uncertain since there were both full-and part-time attendants). It was an interesting, satisfying, and in many ways a thrilling experience, and it gave opportunity to sample the sort of thing that has been taking place among Presbyterian Men for over fifteen years.
The format of the meetings was the same in each of the five cities. Study materials on the chosen theme—this year “Stand Your Ground” (Eph. 6:14)—were sent out to chapters of United Presbyterian Men throughout the church. Selected men did special studies on the theme and were brought in before the area meetings for briefing sessions. At the meetings themselves the theme was presented in the keynote address and variously emphasized in inspirational addresses at the close of luncheons and dinners. There were also morning, afternoon, and evening study sessions under the leadership of the men previously selected and briefed. The series closed with a communion service and an address which gathered together the in-inspiration and content of the meetings. The men took back with them a small study booklet with the summation of the meeting topics, for later use in chapter meetings. Speakers included seminary presidents, chaplains, statesmen, industrialists, ministers, and representatives from other denominations.
This kind of thing which has been going on these years among United Presbyterian Men is matched by similar lay groups in other denominations. The so-called Southern Presbyterians (U.S.) have a single meeting of the same type every year, rather than area meetings. The Methodists also have a single meeting, with tremendous attendance. And so it goes. It is difficult to evaluate these meetings: so many things happen in so many different ways to so many different people. Moreover, effectiveness among the local chapters varies greatly because of widely different leadership, because of the pastor’s help or hindrance, and because of vital (and worthy) competition for time and energy by Mariners, entrenched Bible classes, athletic or musical groups, and the like. The ideal is to have the local chapter of men lose themselves in the total service of the church and so find their lives by losing them.
One thing is certain: there is tremendous inspiration in such meetings. All the speakers direct themselves toward this goal, each with his own approach. Group singing, under carefully selected leaders, is magnificent and moving. Great things come to pass in the give-and-take of small group discussions. The meetings, both large and small, are undergirded and interlaced with prayer, and many of the men come to crises marked by high resolve and decision.
It is hard to measure how a man is nurtured in his faith, but such nurture does occur. Perhaps the greatest help is gained by those who come from a lonely and frustrating local church scene to find themselves in the midst of hundreds of men from all segments of life, who are all deeply concerned with the same high dedication to Jesus Christ. Pastors slip in at the edges of the meetings and are encouraged by what they see. One layman, under the inspiration of such meetings, left a high position in industry to give his life to Christian education; another offered himself, with all his useful talents, to a mission board. A doctor and a television director have made the formation and support of chapters in their state their second vocation. Such effects are endless and endlessly varied. Meetings this year were marked by the attendance of younger men, some of whom are now headed for the ministry.
Other things are stirring among the laymen. Most of the major denominations have encouraged lay participation through studies and increased lay responsibility. But the Holy Spirit works “when, where, and how he pleases,” and no one is wise enough to guess what may come to pass out of all this. We should continually remind ourselves that although John Calvin was always a layman, never an ordained minister, “Calvinism saved Europe” (Fairbairn in the Cambridge Modern History is authority for this).
While seminaries reflect their confusions by endless tampering with curricula and are more than a little desperate about the drying up of the sources of new students, and while boards of Christian education simply do not know what they want to do, or should do, about making all their colleges church-related or even Christian and try desperately to satisfy Christ and high school sophistication in summer camps and conferences—while all this goes on, I say, laymen, with their stubborn simplicities about right and wrong, are slowly working their way out of the theological mists and the gray areas of modern ethics. They think that the Bible is true (or that it isn’t) and that a man can know enough (even if he can’t know everything) to move ahead in Christian living and holy obedience. Laymen, having been encouraged by the clerics, are now enthusiastically taking heart, and they regard some theological subtleties as highly interesting—and highly irrelevant.
Another thing: are you aware of the emergence of lay prayer and Bible study groups all over the country? Samuel Shoemaker had things going in the Pittsburgh Experiment, and now offshoots of that lay movement are everywhere. As Elton Trueblood moves across the country, disciplined cells of Yokefellows appear. One can follow the trail of happy results left by Billy Graham, also. During a week in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Omaha, and Cincinnati, I sat in on lay groups of men who meet each week for prayer and study. These groups arose spontaneously in these cities, reflecting the movement everywhere—and they all seem to be playing for keeps.
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CLASSROOM JUNGLE—Day by day and term by term … the problem of District of Columbia school discipline worsens. It is in the Capital City of the United States that the public school system is called a blackboard jungle. And an act of Congress is deemed necessary to provide that principals and teachers “may use reasonable force in the exercise of lawful authority to restrain or correct pupils and maintain order.” Within hollering distance of the Peace Corps headquarters, that agency could find some work to do without traveling halfway around the world for the exercise of its civilizing activities.—Nashville (Tenn.) Banner.
CONGRESSMEN APPROVE WHIPPING—We hope the Senate will promptly follow suit.… The House did a good day’s job in asserting the right of [District of Columbia school principals and teachers] to “use reasonable force in the exercise of lawful authority to restrain or correct pupils and to maintain order.” Its clarification, by another bill, of the right of school officials to suspend or dismiss incorrigibles also is useful. These bills ought to become law.—The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), May 15.
THE INDISPENSABLE TOOLS—Give Mr. Hansen and his teachers all the tools they need, paddle included—New York Herald Tribune (European Edition).
REMEDY AGAINST INSOLENCE—Teachers must have more authority than they have now. This represents a change in the point of view, so far as I am concerned.… I now believe that the Board of Education rule prohibiting the use of corporal punishment should be eliminated; and that while teachers do not want extensive use of corporal punishment and probably many would never use it, they want to be relieved of the insolence of the pupil who can say to that teacher, as has been said: “You don’t dare to touch me. You don’t dare to lay a hand on me.”—CARL F. HANSEN, superintendent of schools of the District of Columbia.
PSYCHIATRISTS, NOT PADDLES—In the District of Columbia schools, where discipline is said to be a serious problem, mild paddling is not likely to be very efficacious.… Some of these youngsters—the most troubled and troublesome among them—have never known anything but beating all their lives—beating not with a lightweight paddle but with a fist, a strap, a crowbar. They will respond to “paddling” either with derision or with a blow in return.
The community cannot solve the problems of these young toughs by resorting to the techniques that made them what they are. If Congress wants to help the schools deal with them, let it clear the slums that spawned them and provide decent, low-cost housing instead, let it erase the racial discrimination that keeps them and their parents from getting jobs that offer hope and a chance to get ahead, and, above all, let it equip the schools with teachers and counselors and psychiatrists instead of with “paddles.”
Call it what you will—“beating” or “paddling” or “whipping” … or any of the other circumlocutions which mask the crude reality—corporal punishment involves a renunciation of the teacher’s real superiority over a pupil, an intellectual superiority. It means an abdication of the rule of reason. It is an abandonment of teaching.—The Washington Post.
THE COMMON LAW—Under common law the teacher has the legal status of a conditionally privileged person standing in loco parentis to the pupil.… This principle has been enacted into law. For example, the Oklahoma statute states: “The teacher of a child attending a public school shall have the same right as a parent to control and discipline such a child during the time the child is in attendance … [at school].”—“The Teacher and the Law,” Research Monograph 1959-M3, NEA Research Division, September, 1959.
SPARING THE ROD—My experience as a judge in juvenile matters further convinced me that punishment … is most necessary in many cases of juvenile violations of the rules of our society.
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” may seem ancient and barbaric to many of our modern psychologists and sociologists. And I will quickly agree that many of our fine young citizens have grown to manhood or womanhood without being subjected to physical punishment in their childhood, but I have also come in contact with numerous youngsters who understand nothing less than physical punishment.
How well prepared can any person be for the trials of adult life in our modern world if their wrongful acts in childhood have been answered with nothing more than a sympathetic verbal chastisement? To me, a vital part of our educational process is the lesson that violations of the rules of our society must be punished.… How can they believe that punishment will be meted out by society if school officials can take no action against them except a lecture?… Will they feel that adult society will protect them from crimes against them when they see violations go unpunished in their youth? How can we expect to retain our good school instructors when they have no means of effectively maintaining discipline in their classes?—Representative GRAHAM PURCELL (Dem., Texas).
OTHER METHODS WILL WORK—I taught for forty years, and I never felt it necessary to administer corporal punishment. I do not say I never punished children for disobedience.… There are other methods of punishing than using corporal punishment.—ELLIS HAWORTH, chairman, Legislative Committee, D.C. Congress of Parents and Teachers.
HOT SEAT, WARM HEART—Disciplinary measures are justified only when the child experiences in that discipline the love of the disciplinarian. Every punishment given in a hot temper, every chastisement administered in a fit of anger … has the wrong effect, and is, in fact, not Christian discipline.—Jan Waterink, Basic Concepts in Christian Pedagogy, 1955, pp. 67, 68.
THE HICKORY SWITCH—A request by Washington, D.C. public schools for return of the hickory switch brought nods of approval from Brevard educators. Reasonable, supervised corporal punishment has never been forbidden in Florida schools.—Brevard Sentinel.
THE ODDS ARE HIGH—More than two in three elementary school teachers and almost three in four secondary school teachers favored the use of corporal punishment in elementary schools.—NEA Journal, May, 1961, p. 13.