From our tenth-floor vantage point of the White House grounds, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S staff often glimpse some of President Kennedy’s uninvited visitors—particularly the picketers who regularly propagandize Pennsylvania Avenue. More often than any other parade formation the pacifists are there—carrying banners of protest, of pleas for peace on earth, and passing out tracts.

To learn what the pacifists have in mind, I have read their material, corresponded with some of them, and met some in personal conference.

So numerous are motivations for pacifism that it is unfair and unjust to argue that all its champions are in Khrushchev’s camp.

Recently the distinguished Scottish New Testament professor, Dr. James S. Stewart of New College, Edinburgh, made the following comment at Princeton Theological Seminary’s sesquicentennial celebration: “If any Christian should speak out for abolition (of nuclear tests) and then is told that he is a poor dupe, a fellow-traveler, an unconscious victim of Communist propaganda—then this at any rate is a libel and a lie.” American Christians who hold pacifist positions (doubtless a small minority of the church members) do so largely for what they consider Christian rather than Communist reasons, and their sincerity and patriotism are not in doubt.

Were the growing pacifist program in no way influenced by Communist propaganda and objectives, does it fit—both as a political and ecclesiastical activity—into Khrushchev’s strategy? What propagandistic and military use does the Soviet government make of such pacifist activity?

With the modern distortion of language and aversion for defining terms it may be quite possible, even unavoidable, that sometimes the churches and the Communists seem to be saving much the same thing. The disturbing fact, however, is how Communist strategists fit the peace program of the churches into their own program of class hatred and world revolution. When peace-literature, including occasional essays in church and Sunday school publications, takes the same line as is found simultaneously in Communist organs, then our distress must surely deepen. Communist sympathizers often manipulate U.S. public opinion on disarmament and peace and war into propaganda serviceable to the Soviet leaders, men whose temporary goals coincide at points with the announced goals of American pacifists. Commonly shared goals of both Soviet militarists and American pacifists include: recognition of Red China by the United Nations, unilateral American suspension of nuclear tests, demilitarization of Germany, and withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam.

No Unifying Rationale

Pacifists on parade at the White House and other government locations have no unifying rationale, thus reflecting their widely varied sponsorship. Some quote isolated passages from the Bible. Others tell of nonviolent revolution in India. Some cite statistics to prove the futility of modern warfare. Some are sincere church workers, many have no church connection. Some are left-wingers, some have no creed at all but the vision of a warless world.

Many American pacifists sincerely believe that all war is evil. Some believe further that total disarmament is the only sure road to world peace, while others insist that Christians must shun war whether disarmament is possible or not. So-called “peace churches” espoused this view long before Communism became a global menace. Founded in 1950, the Church Peace Mission sought to unite the claims of pacifist groups within various Protestant denominations, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the “historic peace churches” in North America, such as the Brethren, Friends, and Mennonites. Delegates appointed from each communion constitute CPM’s executive committee, whose headquarters are in the Interchurch Center, 475 Riverside Drive, New York City.

The movement’s original objective was not political action but rather the sponsoring of colloquies and literature; its “mission” was that of a pacifist “witness” to the churches. But the “peace churches” soon found themselves involved in a variety of pro-pacifist legislative pressures. Equally disconcerting was the eclipse of the kerygma (Gospel proclamation) as initiated by God and rooted in Christ’s grace. Secular pacifists reduced the Gospel to a humanitarian social ideal that demanded neither repentance nor faith. They promoted peace on earth as a human possibility achievable through legislative repudiation of war, armament, nuclear testing, and so forth. The “sectarian” pacifists did not object to Protestant support of merely secular programs of peace since they sought to commit Christian influence to pacifism by every acceptable means. What the “sectarian” pacifists did deplore, however, was the tendency of American Protestantism to equate this secular demand for peace with the primary intention of the kerygma, thus ignoring the so-called “theological, biblical, and spiritual basis” of pacifism. Although its intentions were spiritual from the first, CPM lacked a fixed theological basis from the outset, sharing as it did the enthusiasm of various and mixed pacifist traditions. While liberal human motivations supplied its dominant spirit in the early years, the movement today lacks any such specific élan, and has no common theology.

Despite the pacifists’ significant propaganda and publicity front, Church Peace Mission is now, in fact, at a life-or-death crossroads. With a maximal membership of 300–500 ministers from all major denominations, CPM has no articulate Christian program, nor has it theological, organizational, or financial strength. American pacifism has not recovered from the crippling defection of Reinhold Niebuhr, whom it nonetheless still respects as a pacifist “heretic.” When World War II exposed the shallowness of liberal optimism, Niebuhr insisted that the tragic dimension of human history requires as much concern for justice as for peace.

In the “post-Niebuhrian era” SPM is still groping for a theological basis for pacifism. At a major meeting in New York in May, 1962, leaders of the movement critically reviewed its history, analyzed the results of a questionnaire to theologians, and debated whether to disband, to continue on present lines, or to institute a new executive organ. The following month a search for fresh theological focus was made in a pacifist—non-pacifist discussion in McLean, Virginia, “under the shadow of the new CIA building.” While the searchlight of biblical imperative was focused on excessive claims made on Christians by the national ethos, no conclusions were drawn.

According to some Mennonites, the present situation offers new opportunities to promulgate the historic view of the “peace” (pacifist) churches. In contrast to religious movements that actively try to eliminate tragedy and struggle from secular history, Mennonites, by tradition, withdraw from the world and take a pessimistic view of secular history. They argue that to apply biblical realism to history means not programs of one kind or another but focusing exclusively on what God does in Christ to bring about a new age. They sense a readiness among present-day pacifists to listen to “Christian love as the only alternative to warfare” because the older liberal pacifism is losing its hold and no vigorous alternative has arisen. Revival of theological study and “biblical realism,” some “peace church” leaders think, points the way to a kerygmatic orientation of pacifism. Perhaps as a part of this spirit, the Church Peace Mission has recently appealed to biblical scholars in Protestant seminaries to set their protest against the nuclear weapons race and the cold war in the context of the Christian Gospel.

While CPM disclaims any official commitment to “nuclear pacifism,” it has eagerly received and widely circulated (to ministers, teachers, and divinity students) a pamphlet, endorsed by ten professors in leading seminaries, that promotes nuclear pacifism. This pamphlet, “A Christian Approach to Nuclear War,” says, among other things: “There is no meaningful way in which one can speak of a ‘just war’ fought with atomic arms … Christian faith and the precepts of the Gospel cannot consistently support the manufacturing and stockpiling of nuclear weapons for purposes of ‘deterrence.’ … The risk of enslavement at the hands of another nation is not so fearful a thing as the risk of effacing the image of God in man through the wholesale adoption of satanic means to defend national existence or even truth … This [Christian] tradition points rather to the need of surrender of some measure of sovereignty by modern nations and the establishment of international law by consent backed by discriminate use of police force under the direction of the United Nations or some form of world government.”

Communist Propaganda and Pacifism

To what extent are pacifists drawing inspiration and direction from Soviet sympathizers? It is not always easy to distinguish Communist techniques and programs toward pacifism from pacifist ventures that sincerely desire world peace. Now that disarmament has become an official U. S. objective, the line is not drawn too sharply even in government circles. Peace crusaders—whatever their “labels”—are quickly credited with sincerity and loyalty.

Things were different a decade ago when disarmament had such champions as the American Peace Crusade. Organized in 1951, APC in 1954 was designated a subversive organization by the government. In 1955, in fact, APC was dissolved by the Attorney General when the Subversive Activities Control Board reported that the Crusade was operated, directed, and supervised predominantly by members and functionaries of the Communist Party who did not publicize this relationship. Noted the Control Board: “While ostensibly promoting various positions and programs as necessary in order to have peace throughout the world … [the ACP] in fact promotes and advances the positions and programs of the Communist Party.”

Today’s pacifist is as likely to draw motivation from the churches as from the Communists. Marjorie Swann, a 39-year-old housewife and mother of four children, was sentenced in 1960 to six months in prison for trespassing on the site of a government missiles base near Omaha. Years before, as a Northwestern University co-ed, she joined a Methodist Young People’s Fellowship whose pacifist minister frequently asked: “Can you imagine Jesus Christ in an army uniform?” She became a pacifist and offered her services to the National Committee for Conscientious Objectors in Washington, D.C. Here she met and married Bob Swann, who had just finished a prison term for refusing to report for military duty when his registration as a conscientious objector to World War II was disallowed as not required by his religious background. Both became active in the Peacemakers, and Marjorie later joined in this group’s 30-mile walk from Omaha to the Army missiles base for a demonstration. Her husband was later arrested for picketing CIA headquarters as a member of the “Fair Play Cuba Committee.”

Whether aware of it or not, the pacifists on parade are made the constant subject of Soviet radio propaganda that imputes a militarist image to the U. S. Communist propagandists, in fact, sometimes reveal an awareness of apparently isolated “peace demonstrations” that suggests these activities to be somehow masterminded by and interrelated, let alone foreknown, to Communist functionaries.

As head of a delegation of 50 U. S. women to the Geneva disarmament conference, Mrs. Cyrus Eaton was quoted on April 12, 1962, as saying in a Hungarian radio interview: “We could see for ourselves at Geneva that the desire for an understanding is lacking.” If her delegation’s request for an audience with President Kennedy is declined, she said, “we shall parade in front of the White House to make known our demand that the disarmament question must be solved … We, peace-loving American women, will do all in our power to help bring about agreement or disarmament.…”

On April 20, Tokyo’s KYODO broadcast word that the Japanese Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (Communist front of the WPC) “has instructed its chapters throughout the country to mobilize their forces to halt the imminent U. S. nuclear tests on Christmas Island. The instruction was given under an agreement reached at an emergency meeting of the council’s standing committee.… In response to the instruction, the Kanagawa ban-the-bombers are scheduled to hold a rally 21 April at Miura.… Similar rallies are also slated at Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture and three other places.”

Moscow radio reported on April 21 that “the forthcoming U. S. nuclear tests in the Pacific have evoked a wave of protest throughout the world.… Each new series of nuclear tests increases the radioactive contamination of the atmosphere, harming the life and health of present and future generations. Prominent Soviet atomic scientists … believe that the American tests will be the dirtiest ever carried out by the United States.… Not a single person was a victim of radiation as a result of the Soviet tests carried out earlier, while the American tests each time resulted in a large number of casualties. It is no accident … that the United States is to conduct this new series of tests not at home in Nevada but at Christmas Island in the Pacific, thousands of miles from its homeland.… Most of the fallout will primarily cover Indonesia, India, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and nearly all of Africa, while its fringes will take in the Middle East and Latin America.… Eminent American scientist and Nobel Prize winner Professor Pauling has estimated the damage the American tests will do to the coming generations.… According to the most conservative estimates, the increased radiation resulting from the U. S. tests will lead to the birth of about 286,000 children with great physical and mental defects. In his letter to The New York Times, Professor Pauling noted that according to estimates the number of victims from these proposed atmospheric tests, including deaths of embryos and still births, will reach about 3 million.”

On April 21, 1962, Peking radio broadcast this message to Asia: “A group of American students, intellectuals, and housewives started a peace ‘march’ to New York from Edison, New Jersey, on Thursday.… This peace demonstration was sponsored by the Peace Action Committee, a joint organization of various peace organizations.… When the procession passes through the industrial cities of Elizabeth, Newark, and Jersey City, more peace supporters will join it. As soon as the procession arrives in New York a big demonstration will be held in front of the U.N. building. On this peace ‘march’ the Peace Action Committee … demanded that the U.S. government immediately end all preparations for the resumption of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere. Also on Thursday a total of 130 university faculty members issued a statement opposing the resumption of nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere.”

The following day Peking radio reported to Asian listeners: “Five thousand American peace champions held a big demonstration in the center of New York City yesterday in protest against the Kennedy nuclear testing.… Most of the demonstrators were college students.… Before the U.N. headquarters … Homer Jack, executive director of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, urged those present to send telegrams to Kennedy urging him to suspend the planned U. S. atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. On the same day demonstrations against the resumption of nuclear tests were also held in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Hartford, Chicago and Buffalo.”

A Moscow Domestic Service report to the Russian people in April began thus: “Picketing of the White House is becoming a routine event in the life of the American capital.… This week protest demonstrations against nuclear tests … are sponsored by the Organization of American Women for Peace.” The report singles out as a demonstrator “the well-known public figure, Mrs. Cyrus Eaton.”

A Pravda article on April 14, 1962, quoted a minister of the United Church of Canada, James Endicott, a member of the Presidium of the World Peace Council and chairman of the Canadian Peace Partisans Committee, as asserting that “the missing link between the present and the future is disarmament” and that “the basic task of the peace partisans movement is the mobilization of broad public opinion in defense of the idea of disarmament.” It further summarizes his views: “Today no man with common sense can fail to consider war anything but a means of destruction.… The bosses of the huge monopolies … with the aid of their political representatives … make use of every opportunity to prevent agreement on disarmament.”

We might well ask: What recent developments in U. S. foreign policy are commended by the pacifists? The Friends Committee on National Legislation cites five “elements of progress”: (1) Soviet-U. S. agreement on the preamble for a disarmament treaty; (2) President Kennedy’s support of the goal of “general and complete disarmament”; (3) creation by Congress of the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for preparing agreements; (4) reconvening of the Geneva disarmament discussions and their enlargement to include 17 nations, among them 8 neutrals; (5) U. S. proposals on Laos and reportedly on Berlin which would exclude solutions by force.

Pacifists and U. S. Policy

Pacifists are not necessarily satisfied with these goals. Not long ago certain spokesmen for the Friends Committee deplored (what they depicted as fact) that “only 14 people in the U. S. Government are working on disarmament.” Now that a separate disarmament agency has come into existence they complain that its budget is “only 1/8000th of what the defense department is getting.” (For the fiscal year beginning July, 1962, the disarmament budget runs $2 million for overhead, $4.5 million for research.) The Friends Committee is distressed because the U. S. defense budget has increased by $7.5 billion since President Kennedy assumed office; it wants “real give and take” in the Geneva conference; it deplores the “gap in atmosphere between Capitol Hill and Geneva” in respect to U. S. enthusiasm for disarmament (and recalls President Wilson’s inability to commit Congress to his goals for the League of Nations). The Committee thinks the U. S. should take more initiative to lessen cold war tensions. We should end travel curbs in the U. S. for Soviet nationals, for example, and close down some of our foreign military bases. And, even if no similar agreements are made by the Soviets, we should renounce biological warfare, says the Friends Committee, and convert such chemical research projects (as in Maryland) into health centers.

U. S. government leaders are not starry-eyed about total disarmament prospects however. In fact, the ideal of “general, complete or total” disarmament—usually shortened simply to “disarmament” since the 1932 World Disarmament Conference—is regarded at present as more illusory than realistic. U. S. leaders are much more interested in “specific steps toward disarmament” which do not jeopardize the nation’s military strength and security. Proposed April 18, 1962, in the U. S. treaty on disarmament—some statesmen called it “the most complete and rational exposition ever presented to a disarmament conference”—was progressive control over armaments that looks toward eliminating the dangers of war. Main features include: (1) balanced stages of progressive disarmament that grant neither side a temporary advantage at any point; (2) inspection and verification; (3) strengthening the United Nations for greater security through the operation of international law and an international police force.

The U. S. hopes that at least secondary reasons—such as the expense burden of missile and anti-missile operations and the reduction of war risk by confining nuclear and thermonuclear weapons to the present possessors (the U. S., the Soviet, Britain, and, to some extent, France)—will win the Soviet over to some of these objectives.

Despite Soviet clamor for world peace and its propaganda barrage against the capitalistic warmongers—while relentlessly promoting class warfare—the disarmament talks have reached no agreement beyond the preamble. Even on this level the Russians on May 29 of this year repudiated the joint declaration against war propaganda. Russia, moreover, had violated the earlier atmospheric test ban treaty, and to this day has thwarted all subsequent attempts to bring about a test ban agreement either in the Geneva talks or at the U.N. The Soviets’ main objection centers in the amount of inspection and verification; they approve verification only of the “bonfire” to destroy stipulated weapons, but deplore anything further as “espionage.” Some leaders think an important point is involved here which should concern the U. S. also; that is, if one side finds itself strategically ahead of the other in the disarmament process, it might swiftly strike a crippling blow at the other. For this reason U. S. negotiators are now calling for only minimal inspection on a zonal sampling basis. While this procedure involves risks, these presumably will lessen by the time all zones are open for total inspection. Throughout the process, moreover, each side would no doubt protect its own security.

Mainly due to the sobering presence of the new nations, the Geneva talks have yielded a good atmosphere, “fairly business-like” discussions, and absence of Soviet invective. Whereas the U. N. has somehow elicited impractical slogans like “ban the bomb” from the young neutral powers, Geneva has exposed them to the unpredictability of the Soviet and the real complexity of disarmament. While American delegates hope to wear the Russians down by making disarmament a continuing major issue in international affairs, they in no sense predict a peril-free world by 1963. At least one delegate has rented a home in Geneva on the premise of a life-long period of discussion.

The secular world harbors multiple doubts and reservations about the value of the disarmament negotiations. An especially live concern is efficacy of any verification system. Skepticism of Soviet sincerity is one contributing element to this mood. If, by contrast, the disarmament negotiations were transpiring between the U. S. and Canada, little of the present popular suspicion and mistrust would be in evidence.

Signs of Soviet Insincerity

What proof have we that the Soviet’s “peace posture” is insincere? First, the history of Communist aggression since 1916 is a matter of record: Communism has entrenched itself over three-fifths of all the earth’s land space, has engulfed more than half our globe’s population, and on an overall average is still striding on at the rate of 55,000 square miles a day. Second, the unrenounced aim of Communism to bring about a proletarian panacea by world revolution is well-known. “We will bury you,” said Khrushchev of American capitalism, at the very time he preached the virtues of peaceful coexistence. According to the 1961 Communist manifesto, “peaceful co-existence of states does not mean renunciation of the class struggle.… Peaceful coexistence is a policy of mobilizing the masses and launching vigorous action against the enemies of peace.” Third, while Soviet spokesmen denounce the U. S. for its “warmongering,” in supposed contrast to the Soviet love of peace, the widest possible circulation is given in Russia—as U. S. negotiator Walter Dean noted at the Geneva disarmament talks—to books that affirm the inevitability of war. We read in The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels: “The Communists … openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing institutions.” All the while the Soviet propagandizes for peace, it deals in cold war deception, promotes class warfare, and engages in military aggression.

At one and the same time the Kremlin assumes a posture of peace and promotes limited objectives through religious and ethical organizations that oppose nuclear and conventional warfare or both. Operations of Soviet functionaries in the Church Peace Council illustrate our point. Recent admission of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council of Churches provides Soviet churchmen extensive opportunities in the Free World to propagandize against armaments stockpiling and nuclear testing. Russian-born Dr. Alexander Kischkowsky, currently teaching Slavic languages in the University of Southern California, in his book Die sowjetische Religionspolitik und die Russische Orthodoxe Kirche, published 1960 in Munich, asserts that the Russian Orthodox Church is anything but a free partner of the state and is compelled to further Soviet goals in peace and in war. Formerly a lector in the Russian Church, Kischkowsky in his volume traces, from 1945 on, the Soviet regime’s brazen exploitations of its relationship with the Orthodox Church to advance Communist goals.

The Soviet record to date—its tendency to downgrade the concessions already made by the U. S. in its disarmament appeals; its rejection of President Eisenhower’s “open skies” proposal; its resumption of nuclear testing in violation of a test-ban agreement; withdrawal of its own offers when they are met (including proposals to ban atmospheric tests and the recent agreement to forego war propaganda)—is hardly encouraging. In a completely disarmed world, moreover, the Soviet realm by sheer force of numbers would still exert tremendous influence in Europe, and internationally through use of its U.N. veto.

A further problem is Red China, which cannot be excluded in any effective plan for a warless world. Currently the Chinese Communists wish to stay outside the disarmament discussions and have criticized the Russian Communists, at times even publicly, for discussing disarmament. And the U. S. and the Soviet have tacitly agreed to bypass discussions with Red China for the present, the Russians being more flexible in these circumstances. At the same time, Red China has openly declared she will not agree to disarmament at any stage unless she is “in on the negotiating process.” Both the U.S. and Russia know that broad disarmament is impossible without Chinese participation. Although Red China does not yet have atomic weapons nor bombers nor missiles to deliver them, the peril of their 4–5 million men under arms is as great to Russia as to the U. S. The U. S. objective is to bring Red China into the negotiating process after the first stage of disarmament is worked out with the Soviet.

Equally disconcerting is the disarmament proposal’s ultimate dependence on an international police force and a revitalized United Nations. In view of the U.N.’s disappointing record in exerting influence and force, is it realistic—it is asked—to expect the U.N. to rule by law in the foreseeable future? The U. S. disarmament proposal includes a strengthening of the U.N. in the first stage of disarmament implementation.

Propagandists for World Government

An International Disarmament Organization to be established with the U.N. when the disarmament treaty becomes effective would verify the process of disarming. In the first stage (to take three years) the IDO Control Council would confirm a 30 per cent arms reduction in most categories, including non-nuclear arms and delivery systems for nuclear weapons; it would confirm the cessation of production of weapons-grade fissionable material and transfer of agreed quantities to non-weapons purposes; it would confirm a manpower reduction of 25 per cent in armed forces to 2.1 million men in both the U. S. and the U.S.S.R. Participating nations meanwhile would prepare for setting up a U.N. Peace Force to operate in the second stage, and would accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. In the final stage of disarmament the U.N. Peace Force would reach full strength and wield such power that no single nation could challenge it.

No doubt the present U. S. proposal includes an eventual transition point where Russia will dominate the European-Asian land mass and American defenses will concentrate in the Americas. This stage, however, will come at a time in the disarmament process (as American planners see it) when world power relationships would already be determined by political factors rather than by arms. Infusion of new authority into the U.N., it is thought, could be achieved by revising its charter. One proposal is that member nations represented on the International Disarmament Commission be required to waive their U.N. veto. But the attempt to widen the role of the U.N. runs counter to much disillusionment over that organization’s effectiveness, and to a feeling of many citizens that the U. S. ought not tie its future destiny wholly to the U.N. Some vocal critics even call the U.N. an extravagant liability.

Underlying the projection of complete disarmament is the concept of ultimate world government, an aspect of current disarmament discussion that greatly gladdens the World Federalists. An executive of the National Council of Churches active in international affairs has remarked: “World government is almost built into the concept (of general disarmament).”

Protestant ecumenical leaders are already planning a post-Delhi conference on disarmament along supernational lines; on the premise that suspicion diminishes as people work together, participants will be invited from both the free world and the Soviet sphere. Their suggestions are to be funneled to the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Pacifist Gains in America

How has the pacifist impact left its mark on U. S. foreign policy? Disarmament, except beyond the point of absolutely essential security, has always been accepted in America, a country which dislikes the image of a military state and has no aggressive military objectives. But the ideal of full disarmament—in President Kennedy’s words, “to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved” (Sept. 25, 1961)—is indubitably a pacifist program. The fact that the proposed U. S. treaty on disarmament as its final stage projects a “U.N. Peace Force” in “full strength with such power that no single nation can challenge it” reflects the ideals both of pacifists and one-worldists. But in the American official attitude toward war as something to be avoided at all cost the pacifists have registered an even deeper gain.

American statesmen recognize the misleading manner in which Communists agitate for peace. To the Kremlin a peaceful world means a classless society. And by insisting that certain wars are legitimate, particularly “wars of liberation” (in other words, revolution against established authority other than their own!), Soviet leaders agitate night and day to promote class warfare.

But the American counterthrust to the Soviet premise that some wars are legitimate (that is, useful to advance Communism) marks a radical pacifist departure from past convictions. Strategists now shaping U. S. disarmament policy are dedicated to the premise that any and all war should be avoided. This simple formula neatly avoids the basic question of a just war; in fact, it implies that war is always the worst evil, and seems to approach a “better Red than dead” philosophy. The disarmament diplomats do not label all unlimited nuclear wars unjust, nor even all nuclear wars, nor even all wars of whatever variety. The words just and unjust seem foreign to their vocabulary. They approach the question of war only from the ideal of a warless world, and refuse to reckon with conditions under which war may be unavoidable and necessary because just. If it is true that all war should be avoided, then a surprise enemy attack that seriously cripples our military capacity would leave no option but surrender. American delegates to the Geneva disarmament talks have asserted that the Soviet Union has neither the first- nor second-strike nuclear capacity to destroy the U. S.; further, the U. S. is determined, they say, to retain a second-strike capacity during the first disarmament stage. But if war cannot be justified even under the circumstance of repelling an aggressor, the maintenance of retaliatory capacity seems senseless, if not abnormal. The pacifist premise that war is always evil, that no war can be just, seems therefore to have made considerable headway in the highest American circles devoted to disarmament diplomacy.

Pacifist spokesmen think that if they now “spell out” what a disarmed world would be like, swift sympathy can be gained for disarmament. Proponents of such an idea little suspect how unusual in human history is the vision of world peace. It appears first in a biblical setting. At a time when totalitarian tyrants threatened tiny Israel on two sides, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a coming day when swords will be turned into plowshares and the knowledge of God shall cover the earth. But Isaiah’s vision of world peace is messianic; as a spiritual work of grace that renews sinful man’s warring nature, peace on earth will be the final supernatural climax to human history. Borrowed by modern idealists, this ideal of a warless world, now often vitalized more by secular evolutionary motifs than by biblical principles, is being spooned to a generation that no longer accepts the Judeo-Christian view of human depravity. Modern man seems unaware that the Christian Gospel not only challenged the military virtues of the pagan world but also replaced them with virtues like peace and compassion; he fails to realize that this Gospel calls for spiritual rebirth into a new race of redeemed men. Today the messianic vision of a warless world is being torn from its proper context and being superimposed upon a post-Christian outlook. And it is being grafted upon a post-evolutionary mood that no longer basks in Charles Darwin’s optimistic view of history but is stirred rather by the revolutionary claims of Karl Marx. C. F. H. H.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord (Psalm 33:12a).

God deals with men and he deals with nations. He uses individuals and he uses nations to accomplish his will. He judges men and judges nations, as such.

The Bible is replete with references to God’s dealings with nations and to the fact that he holds nations responsible for their actions, be they good or evil.

To work out his purposes God chose Israel as a peculiar people, making that nation the repository of his law, the agency of his prophetic messages, and the human channel through which he sent his Son into the world.

Israel rose and fell, not because of aggression from without, but because she departed from her allegiance to God and followed other gods; not because of her smallness in the family of nations, but because she rejected her Messiah.

History records the rise and fall of nations and reveals that their ultimate destiny is tied in with their reaction to God’s revelation and providence. No nation has ever been so great that it could not succumb to the degenerating forces of moral and spiritual laxity which spring from within.

In many ways no nation has ever been so favored of God as has our own. Founded by men and women to whom God was a reality and who were determined to worship him according to the dictates of their consciences, blessed by geographical location and an overwhelming abundance of material resources, we have in a short span of years become the most powerful nation on earth.

Not for nought has there rested on the institutions of our land a clear acknowledgment of God in our heritage and in our cultural and official life. From these sources of faith and allegiance we find “In God We Trust” on our currency, a Bible in every courtroom, “One nation under God” in our oath of allegiance to the flag, chaplains in our armed services, our Senate and House of Representatives opened with prayer, “And this be our motto ‘In God Is Our Trust’ ” a part of our national anthem.

On every hand we find evidence that the United States has given official recognition of our responsibility to God and our dependence on his love and mercy.

Guaranteeing freedom of conscience in religion, maintaining the separation of church and state so that there shall be no state religion nor any act of Congress dictating either religious belief or acts, the historic concept of complete separation of church and state and of “freedom of religion” at no time envisioned separation of the state from God or freedom from religion as a national policy. History indicates that the opposite was the case.

For years there has been an infinitesimal but vigorous minority which, while living under the privilege and protection of laws based on the fear of God and the rights of man, has sought to eliminate from our corporate and public life any and all references to God and acts of worship in his name. This minority has consisted in large measure of agnostics who have used the cloak of freedom of religion while demanding freedom from religion in all of our official national life.

Because of the history and sources of such opposition it came as a distinct shock to the church and even the secular press when a special committee on church and state reported to the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, meeting in Denver in May of this year, recommending what practically means the complete secularization of the state.

This report recommended the elimination of prayers and any religious observances in our public schools and from all public functions, we presume.

“Religious displays” would no longer be permitted on public property so that Christian pageant scenes would be illegal in schools, or on courthouse lawns.

Voters should not consider the Christian character, or lack of it, of a candidate for office, only his “ability and fitness,” when determining for whom to vote.

Divorce by the state would be on human, not spiritual grounds. “Human failure” and “a marriage so broken as to no longer be socially desirable” would be the grounds of separation.

Basic to the philosophy of this report is the concept that the church, as such, is the conscience of the state and that to it is committed the task of advising and remonstrating with the state on secular as well as moral issues.

This report was not adopted by the General Assembly but was referred to a larger committee for further study and report next year. But, within and without church circles, it has caused dismay as well as strong opposition. For the first time there has been recommended to a large denomination a program which would completely secularize the state and divorce it from any and all official recognition or worship of God.

Carried to its logical conclusion “In God We Trust” would have to be removed from our currency, “One nation under God” from our oath of allegiance, the Bibles from our courtrooms, recognition of God from our national anthem, and chaplains from our armed services. It would be illegal to open any public function with prayer, illegal to have prayer or Bible reading in public schools or scenes depicting historical religious events on public property.

Then, on June 25 the Supreme Court declared it illegal for this prayer to be used in the public schools of the state of New York: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

If the basic principle adopted in the Court’s decision is carried to its logical end, we will be faced with a series of suits designed to eliminate from our national life every vestige of recognition of Almighty God, and the strong probability that such suits will win Court approval.

The evidences of moral and spiritual decay are seen in every area of our national life. Are these to be crowned by the official rejection of God? Is our Christian heritage to be legislated away under the guise of freedom? Shall our official life replace the God of our fathers with the agnostic’s contention that there is no God?

The Psalmist speaks clearly to us today: “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Psalm 2:10–12).

Nations have rejected God before this. By official action Communism denies him today. But, all nations shall stand in judgment before him who is King of kings, and Lord of lords. All nations which take counsel against him stand in peril of divine derision: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure” (Psalm 2:4, 5).

Good Morning

You have one experience in common with everyone you will meet today. He had to get up this morning, too. For sheer trauma, waking up is a close second to being born, and it occurs more often. It is not unusual for me to wake up a dozen times in one day: at my desk, in a bus, driving my car, or in a pew. But usually I wake up at home, in the midst of the dawn crisis.

Fear of reprisals keeps me from reporting on our awakening household in detail. I could describe A, groaning, kicking the wall, and pulling the blanket over his head, or B, who rises quickly, dresses with expressionless face in whatever garments happen to be lying about, then collapses insensible across the bed. One member uses a two-alarm system, another a clock radio and a cheery news announcer. The best all-family rouser was the rooster that grew from an Easter chick, but the neighbors deplored his efficiency; he was deported. By all these means we move from bed to bedlam in the space of half an hour.

This morning I missed the weather report, and was about to dial WE 7–1212 for a recorded briefing, when the thought struck me that I might go outside and see the morning myself.

It was unforgettable. The quiet. Only the whine of trucks in the distance and an occasional subdued crash or shout from the house. The color. An autumn morning watches color being born. The rising sun touches the trees and the misty charcoal tones burst into flames. The dew. My shoes were soaked from the wet grass. Frost was on the fallen leaves. A spider web on the garage window had become a sparkling necklace.

It became clear to me why a poet sees the morning differently from a commuter. He stands out-of-doors. Here I was in that morning freshness that poets now describe for cigarette ads.

The Bible pictures dew as a blessing, and blessing as a dew (Psalm 133). The Messiah’s people will be like the dew: an army of young men rising up in the beauty of holiness out of the womb of the morning (Psalm 110:3). Indeed, God himself will be as the dew to his people (Hosea 14:5).

The rising Sun of Righteousness gives a new day, a new birth of the Spirit. In the light of the Gospel it is morning. The hope of the Church’s reformation is the renewal of the Holy Ghost with the dew of the morning.

Man: Evolution, Antiquity

In your September 14 issue on Christianity and Science you have done us all and the kingdom of God a real service.…

First Baptist Church

Ashton, Md.

Reading the two articles by Walter E. Lammerts and Albert Hyma was like reading an eighteenth-century report on evolution, or perhaps even a throwback to the sixteenth. However, they were wonderful and timely examples of a traditional religious prejudice against natural science.…

Examples of this war between religion and science could go on ad infinitum; suffice to say that the Church is not infallible. We dare not take a supercilious attitude, assuming that Christianity has a monopoly on correct answers. When the Church ceases to be objective, it ceases to have the truth.

Evolution is yet a sensitive subject … and indeed the scientists have many problems which require prolonged research. However, this is not to be taken as some kind of aerial signal flare by the Church to commence a blind unintelligible attack upon evolution by calling it “pure fiction” (Hyma, p. 8).

I do not mean to infer that natural science is infallible, or that it dictate to the Church how Scripture should be interpreted. However, surely we must examine natural science objectively—before we storm off “halfcocked”—and then re-examine our own exegesis of the passage in question. There has been more than one inaccurate exegesis. Perhaps it is the task of natural science to keep theology alert.…

Rochester, Pa.

We are grateful to you for this timely discussion of the important question of evolution and its implications.

There seems to be a resurgence of the teaching of creation by evolution clear down to the first grades in our schools. We need truth, not hypothesis. Most scientists admit that evolution is not a proved fact.… However, they present it to the children as if it were fact.

Evidence of design in the world is marvelous indeed. I regret that the doctors’ textbooks in medical school are so inclined to the evolutionary view.

Brookfield, Mo.

One of the unfortunate, but probably necessary characteristics of our present state of learning is specialization. In Christian thinking we see this often graphically illustrated in articles dealing with the general subject of science and Scripture. All too frequently we see this in the case of the theologian unversed in science, or the well-meaning scientist ignorant of biblical theology who tries to “prove the Bible by science” or otherwise relate the two areas of knowledge. Occasionally specialization becomes evident when the scientist who is expert in one field attempts to relate some other field of his mild acquaintance with the Word of God. Such, I believe, is true in the instance of the article “Is Evolutionary Theory Valid?” by Walter E. Lammerts. One could not doubt that Dr. Lammerts is a leading authority in certain aspects of botany. It is to my thinking doubtful whether “careful field study during many vacations since 1936” qualifies a botanist to upset the basic foundations of modern geology any more than many summers growing roses qualifies a geologist to upset the foundations of modern genetics, should he feel disposed to do so. The Christian lay public does well to heed the scientist who is a Christian in the interpretation of the field in which he is expert, and proceed from that point to relate the particular area of science to the Word of God.

Science Dept.

Delaware County Christian School

Newtown Square, Pa.

I share the protest of Professor Hyma about the way evolutionary doctrines are taught in much textbook literature, especially in the social science fields. I am not sure that he has grasped the basic problem because he seems to imply that contemporary thought can be put on the basis of a pure Genesis literalism.

The basic difficulty, as it appears to me after many years of dealing directly with this problem in classes which embraced all current religious cultures, is a confusion of “scientific fact” with metaphysical implications. Evolution is not a fact, but a working hypothesis, and furthermore it is not even a hypothesis about causes or values. But to say, “It actually is still pure fiction,” is a semantic error also.

I am in doubt that Professor Hyma sees this distinction and its implications. Once this analysis is established the ground is cleared for theology, for theology is not based on a time claim, but on the revelation of a divine act. I am not saying that the evolutionary hypothesis furnishes no problems, but they are not insuperable, even from the point of view of a Calvinist doctrine of original sin, which, incidentally, is not literally stated in Genesis.

I deplore, with Dr. Hyma, the contemporary relativism in ethical values, but the problem is much too complicated to be assessed against the doctrine of evolution.

Dept. of Philosophy

Cornell College

Mount Vernon, Iowa

If a local inundation, what need for animals, and especially birds, in the ark?… [Also] does evolution from the animal make man an animal any more than growth from a baby makes one a baby?

Los Angeles, Calif.

The articles … on Christianity and science are very timely. I teach world history, and will present parts of Dr. Lammerts’ article to my students in connection with our study of the beginnings of history. No doubt I will take some parts of Hyma’s article also.…

Canton, Ohio

It is my strong conviction that thirty years of progressive education, and thirty years of teaching youngsters that they are descended from apes, has brought America to the point where self-respect and respect for one’s fellow man and reverence for God have almost entirely disappeared from our social order.…

Vidor, Tex.

May I place an order for a dozen copies of [the] issue. In my tattered book it is the best you’ve produced.…

Menlo Park, Calif.

The very excellent articles entitled “How Early is Man?” and “A Great Unfinished Task” … represent truly first-rate thinking about setting up a dialogue between science and religion, whereas the articles by Drs. Lammerts and Hyma … are obscurantist and completely irrelevant to anyone who is interested in relating scientific to religious truth.

First Presbyterian Church and Westminister Foundation

Annapolis, Md.

Thank you for printing Professor Wilson’s very provocative article, “How Early is Man?” Orthodoxy hinders the cause of the Gospel whenever it gives the impression that the infallibility of Scripture implies a specific answer to the question of human antiquity.

Prof. of Ethics and

Philosophy of Religion

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

I am somewhat disturbed by the article.… He contends that the Bible is not chronologically correct and that the age of man is probably older than we have always thought. I am only a layman, but I looked up the references and I certainly cannot see it his way.…

Westphalia, Kan.

Whether Adam was created instantly, or whether his development took millions of years, is not really important. The blueprint of his creation is not given in the book of Genesis. It may be written in the rocks and fossils of the earth. Time is nothing to Jehovah. The image of God is spirit, for God is spirit. We are spiritual beings. Our duty is to serve Him, not to engage in endless disputes over personal opinions.…

Harlingen, Tex.

Why are we so anxious to include the Zinjanthropus animal and his friends into our human family?…

Clearly a definition of man must be related to the image of God, particularly in the area of man’s spiritual relationship to God. The evidence of this fact appears most dramatically in three ways.

1. Man has an awareness of life after death in his heart.…

2. Man has a subconscious or conscious uneasiness about his sins.…

3. Man must worship God. He may argue unconvincingly with himself, as the atheist today and the fool of the Scriptures (“there is no God”), but this only proves his created relationship to God.…

If the above is true, an early fossil may definitely be called man only [with] evidence of one of these three conditions.… All other fossils must be placed in the animal kingdom because of lack of positive evidence of God’s image within them.…

Alameda, Calif.

Genes of apes cannot ever yield man. Zinjanthropus is … ape.

Canterbury, Conn.

Marilyn Monroe

L. Nelson Bell’s “Sinning—and Sinned Against” re Marilyn Monroe (Aug. 31 issue) contained much truth, but some of it was of the trite variety such as the secular press has been gurgling and slobbering out. No Christian would question that it was a pity this woman lived the kind of life that she did, nor that she had many handicaps, nor that she was exploited. But to imply that she never had a chance is going too far. Sorrowful as we must be in Christian love to so state, the fact remains that she was an evil woman who did have a million chances.… If she was exploited, she did some exploiting too—I understand she left half a million dollars out of her exploitation of carnality. I don’t think there was ever a moment when she could not have broken a legal contract for sin and turned to decency and, if necessary, obscurity.…

This is not to minimize Christian love, nor is it to imply that society is not sinful and evil or that commercial exploiters are not hideously rotten. But sin and all evil goes back to the individual.

Memphis, Tenn.

A national magazine carried an article about her, in which she stated that she was not free to talk with anyone she wished.

After reading [L. Nelson Bell’s] article, I was reminded of the Apostle Paul, in Acts 16:16–19: “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers”.…

I feel we fail as Christians to pray for those who are being held in bondage today.… May God help us as Christians to move over into the book of Acts.

Alexandria, Minn.

Revelation

Re “Karl Barth” (Eutychus, Aug. 3 issue): the orthodox view of revelation does not eliminate personal encounter with God as a vital factor in revelation. It simply affirms that this is only half the truth. In the Bible we encounter the person, and also learn facts about Him. John says, “And hereby we know that we know him” (1 John 2:3). Again, the same writer addresses believers as “all those who know the truth” (2 John 1). Divine truth is revelation. To John revealed truth and personal encounter are inseparably wed. Paul … could say, “which (thing) in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5; 1 Cor. 2:10). Revelation is both personal encounter with the living God and the means to that end, the body of truth found in the Scriptures.

Does not the author of Hebrews ignore the human instrument and attribute to Scripture the quality of being directly spoken by the Holy Spirit—“even as says the Holy Spirit” (Heb. 3:7; 10:15)? Certainly, whatever the Spirit speaks is truth and revelation. What better way, I should like to ask, is there for persons to reveal themselves than through words. Could words spoken by the Holy Spirit not be revelatory words? Could they be fallible words?

The record of revelatory events alone is insufficient to guide depraved minds into the truth. Event must have interpretation. Did not our Lord reveal himself to man by both his word and his person? Why did Christ spend forty days teaching (inspired teaching) after his resurrection if event was sufficient alone? We must have the means of revelation (the event) but also the meaning. With this concept in hand, our attention is directed to the exegesis of the text, wherein alone is there deliverance from hopeless subjectivity.

Dallas, Tex.

Lord, Teach Us

Needed, bold and clear is Prof. Roark’s article (“Lord, Teach Us To Pray!”, July 6 issue). Addressed to laymen it is, but needed by many an evangelical minister. Lecturing our students on real substance in suitable form for public prayer I find most difficult, but rewarding.

Central Baptist Seminary

Dean Toronto, Canada

Versions And Aversions

For some time I have sensed a conviction that there are being imposed upon present-day readers of the Bible too many versions.

There seems to be no end of these new offerings with their much paraded benefits and values. As a result, listeners of sermons from many pulpits are compelled to hear quotations read from an increasing number of recommended versions of the Scriptures.

One sometimes finds himself wondering about the motives which are prompting this quite unusual list of Bible versions, with their “Helps” of various kinds. Are the motives those of genuine helpfulness, or of varied doctrinal promotion, assertion of leadership, etc.? Or are the motives purely mercenary? In some instances, it is not a “new version,” but a well-known and generally-accepted version with notes and interpretations with very definite bias and slants.

There is a very subtle psychology about notes printed in Bible editions. The uneducated and less thoughtful person fails to distinguish between what is printed in the Bible itself, and what is printed in the notes on the same page. Thus the average reader is unconsciously influenced by notes printed on the pages of the Bible which he reads. It has been my practice to advise against the use of Bibles with notes. This advice has been based upon general principles, even though many good things have been printed as “Helps” in Bible versions. References are, of course, useful.

One of the most recent, and even most subtle of offerings in Bible versions is under the caption of “Amplified New Testament,” “Amplified Old Testament,” or some such catchy title. It is surprising how gullible people are, and how many otherwise capable advisers and popular leaders fall for almost any new thing, and allow their names to be attached to enthusiastic commendations of new offerings.

What is done in the “Amplified” publications which I have examined is this: In the instance of the New Testament, the authors have sought to explain or “amplify” the passages by lining up the various possible synonyms of the particular Greek word employed from which the reader may take his choice. Here is an illustration:

As recorded in John 17:17 in our Lord’s upper-room prayer for his immediate apostles and all future believers, he prays, according to the King James Version, the American Standard Version and even the Revised Standard Version, “sanctify them.” The authors here also translate “sanctify them,” and then follow with the words and phrases: “purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy.”

This leaves the reader to choose for himself the word or the phrase he prefers, or thinks the best translation. Instead of helping the reader who does not know the Greek, and cannot go for himself to the Greek text for information, it confuses him or drives him to a guess or a prejudiced choice.

This is exactly what a helpful Bible version should not do—drive a reader to a choice for which he is not prepared. A Bible version should do for the reader what he cannot do—provide for him a trusted, accurate translation of what the original really says.

The instance just cited could be repeated hundreds of times. It is readily seen that so-called helps become hindrances—instead of help there is left confusion.

Dr. A. W. Tozer has recently illustrated such Bible amplification by taking the little poem “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and practicing amplification on the poem by doing the same thing which has been done in the so-called New Testament “amplification.” The results on the poem are ridiculous, but no more so than when such amplification is practiced on the Bible, and with much less serious results.

What a Bible reader should do is to adopt a dependable, accurate version of the Bible, in which the best of reverent scholarship has placed at his fingertips a trustworthy text which he need have no fear of following.

This writer has employed the King James Version from his childhood and from which he has committed to memory a number of whole chapters and Psalms, and still loves it. Despite its imperfections, which all translations have, and its archaism of expression, it is still a great version. The most accurate English version of the Bible ever made, in the judgment of this writer who has taught Greek New Testament and English Bible for almost fifty years, is the American Standard Version (ASV).

Winona Lake, Ind.

SOMEONE MUST LOSE—Gambling has now become the largest illegitimate business in the United States. A recent poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion has shown that 45 per cent of our nation’s adult population will confess to participating in some form of gambling, while the records of the California Commission on Organized Crime suggest that the annual profit in gambling is well over two billion dollars. Senator Estes Kefauver estimated that the gross amount bet yearly would exceed the combined profits of the United States Steel Corporation, General Motors, General Electric, and the top 100 manufacturing enterprises of the nation.

The word “gambling” suggests to the average mind a movie scene in Monte Carlo. Or in some sort of vague way, we think of the national lotteries of the British Isles, where the chance of winning is about 1 to 450,000. But in post-war Germany, children coming from Mass at the great cathedral in Cologne stopped to buy tickets, hoping to win a bicycle. Profits such as that are supposed to be all right, because they were to be used in repairing the building!

Then again, there is our own Las Vegas, where an elderly lady sat with a sack of sandwiches as she kept slot machines going. This was “legal” gambling.

In southern California, the Santa Anita race track has managed to root itself deeply into the community life; the track has contributed well over $10,000,000 to charities. Among its gifts are such items as annual contributions to the community chests of all nearby communities; thus such agencies as the YMCA and the Boy Scouts of America have become the beneficiaries of one of our greatest gambling organizations.

Certainly, gambling has become a big business. But just what is to be considered as “gambling”? We use the word occasionally as if it meant the taking of a chance, the accepting of a possibility of risk. Thus we say that it is a gamble to walk down the street, or that life itself is a gamble.

But in a court of law, gambling is defined as involving three necessary elements: (1) a consideration (such as money) is given for the right to participate, (2) a game is used in which the outcome depends largely upon chance, and (3) a prize in some sort of value is paid to the winner. Thus business ventures, insurance programs, even marriage, become matters of risk, not gambling. For the term “gambling” is to be applied to wagering, to using a game and granting prizes; it involves the losses of some to offset the gains of a few others.

In this light, gambling is quickly seen as a menace to personal character. There are those who suggest that gambling should be made legal, that the desire to gamble is inherent among man’s instincts and cannot be denied. But then, let us legalize burglary and murder as well, for these crimes are merely the results of antisocial drives!

The beginning gambler soon experiences certain subtle changes in his character. He no longer believes in earning his own way; he has lost his faith in hard work. He lives in a world of whimsy, the realm of the long-shot dream. No longer does he believe in cause and effect, in law and order. It is morally wrong for a man to subject his character to such deteriorating influences.

Our nation was built upon the Christian principles of brotherly love, of mutual concern. But the gambler knows that winning requires that someone be the loser; his winning must be purchased at the expense of another. Close friends will not gamble, for they do not wish to exploit each other!

But gambling is not the only evil of our world; modern society holds closely to its evil trinity of three gods: gambling, alcohol, and prostitution. These three go hand in hand, and the gambler will quickly come in contact with the other two. Each shares its converts with the other two, and each cooperates to keep the other two in business.

Finally, gambling must be recognized as wrong because it corrupts our society. The legal gambler and the corrupt politician have ever been close friends. Some would suggest that gambling should be legalized because its taxes will help to support our government, but gambling is a social leech, it has no product of value to offer. The revenues of the gambler have first been created by some legitimate business venture, and should have found their way to another. The money received by the gambler means less business for the grocer, the clothing store, the gasoline station.

Then too, the fact is that gambling always corrupts government. The report of the Senate crime commission indicated that 20 per cent of the gambler’s “take” is used as a fund to corrupt public officials. Responsible public officials always agree that wherever illegal gambling is conducted openly, it can be done only at the expense of the corrupted character of public officials.

At one time former Mayor O‘Dwyer (New York City) proposed that legal gambling be permitted in New York State. Governor Dewey made a powerful response:

“It would be indecent for a government to finance itself so largely out of the weaknesses of the people which it had encouraged.… The entire history of legalized gambling in this country and abroad shows that it has brought nothing but poverty, crime, and corruption, demoralization of moral and ethical standards of living, and misery for all of the people.”—The Rev. GEORGE C. DESMOND, Minister. The Methodist Church, Hillsdale, Illinois.

TO THE POINT—Sunday morning, in a Vermont town, my last day in New England, I shaved, dressed in a suit, polished my shoes, whited my sepulcher, and looked for a church to attend. Several I eliminated for reasons I do not now remember, but on seeing a John Knox church I drove into a side street and parked Rocinante out of sight, gave Charley his instructions about watching the truck, and took my way with dignity to a church of blindingly white ship lap. I took my seat in the rear of the spotless, polished place of worship. The prayers were to the point, directing the attention of the Almighty to certain weaknesses and undivine tendencies I know to be mine and could only suppose were shared by others gathered there. The service did my heart and I hope my soul some good. It had been long since I had heard such an approach. It is our practice now, at least in the large cities, to find from our psychiatric priesthood that our sins aren’t really sins at all but accidents that are set in motion by forces beyond our control. There was no such nonsense in this church.—JOHN STEINBECK, in Travels With Charley, the story of the “rediscovery of America” on an automobile trip.

Unashamedly and without apology I am a Southerner. Born in beautiful Alabama, January 4, 1920, I have always lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. My love for the South is inborn. My parents and my grandparents were poor, but God-fearing and hard-working people. They were not Southern aristocrats, but I am honored to be of their lineage—the lineage of farmers and mountaineers. I’m as Southern as grits and hush-puppies, as turnip greens and corn pone.

When God called me to preach as a youth of 18, I was willing to go anywhere. It was with relief, however, that I heard God’s voice: “I want you to be my preacher in the Southern United States.”

Like many of my fellow Southerners, I grew up with a guilty conscience. I do not know when it first dawned on me that something was wrong among my people of the South. Now it seems that I always knew it, but it took years of soul-searching and the chastening of God before I would confess it. Most often I was chastened through my own conscience; sometimes it would be by the word of Scripture, however, or at other times the voice of another with a conscience more troubled than my own.

I was taught a concept of freedom that declared all men were created equal. Yet I was taught that a great race of people were not equal to me. I was better than they because my skin was white and theirs was black. I was to remind them of their inferiority by never referring to them with the titles “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Miss.” Their first names only were sufficient even if they were my elders. I must relegate them to inferior status by maintaining a strict policy of segregation.

I lived in the Bible Belt and was taught to believe God’s inspired Word from cover to cover. That Bible states in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, … for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” But this evidently was not to apply to the Negro. He might be my brother in Heaven, but never on earth. To be sure, I was taught to be good to the Negro. I must never take advantage of him. I must see that he heard the Gospel.

When these inconsistencies first occurred to me, I was able to answer my conscience with the stock answers of white supremacy. After all, the Negro was just a few years out of the jungles. He could not expect first-class citizenship. He was dirty. He smelled. He was immoral. Besides, it was constitutional to provide him “separate but equal” facilities. The Supreme Court had said so in 1896. In addition, the Negro was satisfied with his segregated lot—except for maybe a few radicals. The most quoted Negro in the South was the one who allegedly said, “Boss man, I’d rather be a nigger on Saturday night than to be a white man all the rest of the week.”

Then I began to see the system of “separate but equal” in operation. I saw the justice the Negro received in the courts. When a teen-ager I witnessed an accident. Since I was the only witness, my testimony completely absolved the Negro driver. Yet in a conference in my presence the white prosecutor and the white defense attorney agreed on a compromise fine of $100. And the judge accepted their agreement. There was no thought given to the possibility of his innocence. When I protested it was patiently explained to me that “we must be hard on these niggers to keep them under control.” The Negro was controlled all right: he went to jail because he could not pay his fine.

I saw their so-called “equal” schools—modern schools for white children and one-room firetraps for Negro children. It was not unusual for the school board to spend $5 for each white child to $1 spent for each Negro child. I heard white men boast of black mistresses—men who would lynch a Negro man if he touched a white woman. I heard that the thing to be feared most of all if the Negro got out of hand was inter-marriage and the pollution of white blood.

My “growing-up” years through college were spent in Birmingham. After seminary I returned for a 3½ year pastorate. This city has been called the capital of Jim Crowism and the most race-conscious city in the world. I saw there white supremacy in all its strength. Early in my ministry I served a small church in Cuba, Alabama, in Sumter County, where the Negroes formed 79 per cent of the population. Race relations were far from ideal there, but the situation was superior to that in my home town, where police brutality, bombing of Negroes’ homes, floggings, and mob violence were more commonplace than the good citizens liked to admit.

Voting rights were consistently denied many Negroes throughout the South. In a major city with over 100,000 Negroes of voting age, less than 5,000 were qualified to vote. Voter registration tests were set up so that the registrars could see that only a select few were able to pass.

Furthermore, I began to see what this prejudice was doing to the South. Men were poisoned with it so much that they could react only emotionally and not intelligently.

The time came when I could not accept sweeping generalizations about the Negro race. The Bible, sociology, and science would not let me. Many had a troubled conscience, saw the evil in the system, wanted something done about it. Yet few dared speak. The price too often was to be ostracized, to be considered a traitor to your race, to be called a “nigger lover.” Some preachers lost their pulpits for speaking out. The South discovered to the further discomfort of its conscience that it really didn’t believe in freedom of speech.

No one has been caught in this dilemma any more tragically than devout Christians of both races. There are sincere Christians who love God and who mean to do his will, yet who differ drastically in their opinions of what is right and wrong in this issue. Some have “blind spots” which may obviously be wrong to another person, but which are real and must be dealt with. Other Christians with a moderate approach have been caught in a “conspiracy of silence.” All too often the only voice heard has been that of the extremists. We have tried to keep it out of the churches, but only the churches have the answer. It is found in the Gospel and we must proclaim it. We must not keep silent any longer. Silence could be fatal.

Let me confess two things. First, I am not free from racial prejudice. It keeps cropping out in unexpected ways and places. Second, I do not have all the answers to all racial problems. The social structure of the South is complex, and it will take praying, planning, patience, and perseverance to work it all out. The important thing is that we be willing to begin taking constructive steps toward the solution.

Some center all their attack on segregation. Segregation has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court. It is no longer legal in public facilities. Segregation has absolutely no defense in the Bible. However, this is not really the main issue before us. Other areas of our nation have removed their segregation barriers and found that the problem remains. It is as if your house were on fire. The fire originated in the basement, but has now extended to the roof. It is not enough to put out the fire on the roof and leave the fire burning in the basement. Segregation is the fire on the roof. Racism is the fire in the basement. The house will be destroyed if all the fire is not put out, but the Christian may well focus his attention first on the source of the fire.

I do not know all the answers, but I am convinced that there is an answer, and that it can be found if Christian men, black and white, will search for it together.

As I first approached the Scriptures I had the feeling that I might find something to support the South’s position. After all, many sincere Bible-believing Christians are staunch segregationalists and believe firmly in white supremacy. Some base their beliefs on the “curse of Ham.” I studied Genesis 9. I found not the slightest reference to the Negro. The curse was pronounced not by God, but by Noah awakening out of a drunken stupor, and not on Ham but on his son, Canaan. Canaan was not turned black, nor did he father the Negro race. Rather he was the progenitor of the Canaanites, who were not black. All this was obvious to the reader of the Scripture, and one could come to only one conclusion. Using this Scripture to justify calling one race of people inferior was totally unwarranted. Identifying the Negro race with the curse of Ham was a cruel hoax conceived in prejudice and perpetuated in ignorance. The Bible, as a matter of fact, does not mention the Negro race. It asks, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin …?” (Jer. 13:23). In Acts 13:1 we have reference to “Simeon that was called Niger.” “Niger” means “black,” so we assume he was a Negro. If so, the church at Antioch was integrated, because he was either a prophet or a teacher there. Such references, however, give us no specific instructions. Such must be deduced from the great principles of the Bible.

The Bible teaches the common origin of man. God, the Creator, the Bible says, “made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and from them all races have sprung. Man was created in God’s image. Therefore, every man possesses infinite worth and should be treated with respect as a person.

When man sinned and was separated from God, a Saviour was promised. Christ was the fulfillment. Those who experience his salvation become the children of God and brothers of each other. This spiritual relationship transcends race and all other considerations. Surely it would not be right for a Christian to show prejudice toward his brother. Rather he must love him. Jesus was most specific about that in 1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” Again Jesus said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In view of the parable of the Good Samaritan that followed, surely no one today would seek to justify his white supremist attitude by asking, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25–37).

The Bible further teaches that God is no respecter of persons.… Furthermore, the Bible teaches explicitly the equality of all men in Christ. Colossians 3:11 says, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” Beneath the withering heat of Bible truth what faith I had left in white supremacy faded away. I was faced with a choice: accept Southern tradition or the Word of God. What else could a Christian do?…

Nothing reached my heart more than the pleas of our missionaries around the world. I helped to send them out, and I felt a deep sense of responsibility to them. When they came home they told how stories of the Negroes’ treatment in America were spread around the world, especially among other black people. People on the mission fields asked the missionaries if it were really true that there was segregation in America and if stories of racial discrimination were factual. Many lost confidence in the sincerity of the American citizen who had sent a missionary to him. The eyes of the world were focused on our treatment of minority groups. Missionary after missionary warned us that our attitudes were making their work less effective.

It seemed to me that if my prejudice would keep even one soul on our mission field from finding the Saviour or add one ounce to the tremendous burdens already borne by our missionaries, it was a price too big to pay.

All over the world new independent nations are springing up. Many of these nations are predominantly of other races. In the past these people have looked to us with hope, for we were known as the champions of the oppressed. Now they are beginning to wonder if we really believe the ideals of freedom which we profess. The Communists have exploited the racial situation. J. Edgar Hoover says, “The controversy on integration has given the Communists a field day.”

Communism is our most potent enemy. The Red wave moves on. Communists have made vigorous attempts to win the American Negro. The vast majority of American Negroes have rejected them vigorously. Both J. Edgar Hoover and the House Committee on Un-American Activities testify to the failure of Communism to reach any large segment of American Negroes.

In facing the question of what to do, let us acknowledge that much has been done already. The picture is vastly different from that of 25 years ago. In spite of the problems that remain, the lot of the American Negro is better by far than that of his colored brethren elsewhere in the world. His standard of living is rising, he attends free public schools, is voting in larger numbers, has freedom of worship and many other privileges denied to his fellows in some nations.

There is much the Negro must do for himself. I would challenge those organizations working for Negro rights to remember that privilege demands equal responsibility. A demand for rights without acceptance of that responsibility can only result in chaos.

But let us recognize there is much we as white Christians can do. I have tried in this message to describe what has taken place in my own experience. This was no sudden change, nor did it take place recently. Much of what I have said has been said in part in other messages. I preach it now most of all to awaken your conscience, to commit you to the proposition that Christ has the answer to the racial problem, and that we as Christians must find it and proclaim it.

You must decide what you will do about it, but as a Christian I remind you that Jesus Christ has the right to control your attitudes and your conduct. Seek his guidance and do not be afraid to do as he commands. “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23, 24).—A sermon by the Rev. JAMES L. MONROE, Pastor, Riverside Baptist Church, Miami, Florida.

THE PREACHER:

William R. Mackay is Chaplain to the Inverness Group of Hospitals in Northern Scotland. Graduating in Science at Aberdeen University in 1934, he then studied Divinity at the Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh, and was ordained in 1937. In the course of the Second World War he served as chaplain in North Africa, Italy and the Middle East, and then returned to parish work in Scotland as minister in Edinburgh and in Inverness-shire before taking up his present post in 1961.

THE TEXT

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

THE SERIES:

This is the tenth sermon in our 1962 series in which CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents messages from notable preachers of God’s Word in Britain and the continent of Europe. Future issues will include sermons from Vice-Principal J. A. Motyer of Clifton Theological College, Bristol, and the Rev. James Philip of Holyrood Abbey Church, Edinburgh, bringing the series to its termination.

This chapter forms part of an account of a memorable day in the history of the children of Israel, namely, the day on which Solomon’s temple was dedicated. It was a day which would not be forgotten readily by those who were privileged to be present, for God seemed to be very near, and in token of his presence and his approval he gave a manifestation of his glory. The enthusiasm of the people as they offered their sacrifices appeared to know no bounds; but God knew the fickleness of the human heart, and so on this day of national rejoicing when the people with unrestrained fervor proclaimed their allegiance to him, he foresaw a time when there would be spiritual declension which would bring his judgment on the land.

This promise was made in the first instance to those whom God describes as “my people,” that is, Israel as a nation. Israel had been chosen by God to be a nation which would be distinct from all other nations and, as such, was the heir of many promises. The Apostle Paul reminds us at a later date that “they are not all Israel who are of Israel,” and yet I take it that the promise in our text embraced the nation as a whole. In like manner in these days in which we live God has his Church as distinct from the world, but not all those who profess to be members of the Church have been regenerated by his Holy Spirit. Yet here is a promise which embraces the whole of the visible Church; God still calls us, through his inspired Word, to return to him, the King and Head of his own Church.

The Need For Humility

Four steps are outlined for those who would set their faces towards the road which leads back to God and the first of these is humility: “if my people shall humble themselves.” Pride is one of the most common of human failings and yet it is a deadly sin. I heard a psychiatrist say recently that nowadays the seven deadly sins are minimized, and that pride, for example, is often described as “confidence in one’s own ability.” But call it by whatever name we will, pride is still that ugly thing which causes puny man to shake his fist in the face of Almighty God, and say, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” When a soul is humbled in the presence of God, however, this blustering attitude retreats into the background and the soul will be prepared to make acknowledgment of certain things. To begin with, there will be an acknowledgment of sin. Sin will be seen in its true colors as a “want of conformity unto, and transgression of, the law of God.” It will no longer be explained away in such terms as “an error of judgment,” or “a mistake,” but will be recognized as an act of rebellion. Moreover, the wrong which is done through sin will be regarded as a wrong not merely against one’s fellow, but against God. In the spirit of true humility the penitent soul will say, as the Psalmist did, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight …” (Ps. 51:4).

Coupled with this acknowledgment of sin there will be an acknowledgment of failure. It is characteristic of the man whose religion is a mere formality that he is generally well satisfied with his own attainments. The standard which he adopts is man-made, and by this standard he compares very favorably with his fellows. “I’m as good as other men and a good deal better than most of them,” he is heard to say, as he seeks to boost his morale. On the contrary the man who stands humbled in the presence of God is stripped of his self-assurance and readily admits that he has been “weighed in the balances and found wanting.” “Man’s chief end,” he remembers, “is to glorify God,” and as he contemplates his own weak efforts he realizes how little he has achieved towards the fulfillment of this end. A saintly man said to me recently, “I shall not be afraid to meet my Maker for I am resting on the finished work of Christ, but when I think of how little I have done for him I shall be ashamed to look him in the face.” And these are the sentiments of all who have learned the secret of true humility.

Arising out of this sense of sin and failure there will also be an acknowledgment of need. When the eyes of men are opened by the grace of God they are conscious not only of a sense of sin but also of their need of divine help, and they are ready to say with Augustus Toplady:

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears for ever flow,

All for sin could not atone:

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

The Need For Prayer

Humbled in the presence of God by a sense of his own unworthiness, the subject of grace will moreover recognize his need of divine help as he faces the trials and temptations of life. If his own efforts are futile to effect his justification, they are equally futile to promote sanctification; and so, with an enlightened mind, he implores the aid of the Divine Helper. Thus by humility the mind is conditioned for the exercise of prayer, which is the next essential on the road to spiritual recovery.

When Saul of Tarsus was brought to the house of Ananias following his conflict with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus it was recorded of him, “Behold, he prayeth.” This was no new occupation for Saul, for as a Pharisee he was well accustomed to the regular routine of prayer. But now his prayers were no longer a mere formality but a tremendous reality. They were the utterances of a man who had been humbled into saying, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Surely there is a worthwhile lesson for us here. The Church of God needs to be shaken out of her formality and to recapture the spirit of true prayer. That noted preacher of a past century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, used to describe the weekly prayer meeting as “the heating apparatus of the Church.” Yet in how many churches today the heating apparatus is never turned on! It is little wonder then that we find such a low spiritual temperature in our midst. The embers of the fire of our spiritual life are burning so low that they fail to bring comfort and cheer to people who seek these, and perplexed and disillusioned men and women are turning their back upon the Church because it has nothing to offer to them. Wherein then lies the remedy for the apathy and apostasy of this present age? “If my people,” says God, “… shall … pray … then will I … heal their land.”

The Need For Earnestness

A further essential requirement on the part of those who seek the way back to God is earnestness. They must “seek my face,” says God. It is surprising how many people who are intensely earnest and persevering in their attitude to problems concerning their material welfare are casual almost to an equal degree in regard to spiritual matters. During the last world war when many commodities were in short supply in Britain, the only way to procure certain articles was to take one’s place in the line, and it became a common sight to see long lines in our streets. Consequently many people developed a “line complex,” and some were even known to take their place without knowing what they were waiting for. The obvious reason was that they were afraid they would miss something. What a tremendous difference it would make to the life of the Church if its members showed the same concern in regard to spiritual things! There would always be crowded congregations because men and women would be afraid to remain away from services less they miss a blessing. Thomas was not present on that first occasion when the risen Christ revealed himself to his disciples in the Upper Room, and as a result we can believe that for a time, at least, his witness was impaired because his mind was clouded by doubts and fears. And who can deny that many today find themselves in “Doubting Castle,” and are not contributing as they should to the life and witness of the Church because they are not frequently enough in the company of Jesus.

Another practice to which those who lived in wartime Britain grew accustomed was that of granting priority. Certain projects were regarded as more important than others, and there was little prospect of any work’s being undertaken unless it appeared on a priority list. What we are all too inclined to forget, however, is that the Lord has provided a priority list, and right at the head of that list is the very thing which our text counsels us to do. “Seek ye first,” says Christ, “the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). Yet many professing Christians are so deeply concerned with things which should be of secondary importance that they have little or no time left in which to “seek the Lord”; as a consequence their spiritual growth becomes stunted. Is it not time then for all of us to check up on our priorities and to ensure that the Lord is given his rightful place in our hearts and lives? And remembering that this is an urgent matter, let us do it now. In days of old the prophet Hosea sent forth a clarion call to backsliding Israel, and surely his words are apposite to the times in which we live: “Sow to yourselves in righteousness,” he says, “reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).

The Need For Renouncing Evil

The remaining condition which was required of Israel as a harbinger of blessing was a renunciation of evil: they were to “turn from their wicked ways.” It is surprising that a people who had been chosen by God should be so ready to turn their backs upon him. Yet the Israelites were all too prone to follow the heathen nations round about them and to engage in, among other things, the practice of idolatry. From their history we learn that time and time again they forsook the living God and worshiped the gods of the heathen, and we are confronted with such sorry spectacles as that which greeted Moses when he came down from the mount and found the people, for whom God had effected a great deliverance, bowing down and worshiping a golden calf. Unfortunately the practice of idolatry has not ceased with the passing of the years, and while it is true that we may no longer worship golden calves, as Israel did, yet there are many idols to which men do homage and, as a result, Christ is dethroned. How many there are, for example, who, like the rich young ruler, are making wealth their God. In this material age in which everything is measured in terms of pounds or dollars, we may sometimes even be found guilty of assessing spiritual progress by the offerings of the people. It is true of course that where there is real spiritual life there will be sacrificial giving, but it is all too possible for a church to glory in her financial achievements rather than in her Lord. Like the church in Laodicea she may be “rich and increased with goods” and think that she has “need of nothing,” not knowing she is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

Another idol of which we must ever beware is popularity or the approval of men. We tend to become so afraid lest we may be thought odd or different from our fellows, and, as a consequence, the voice of the Church is not raised as often as it should be against moral evil. When situations arise as they so often do when professing Christians are called upon to take a stand for righteousness and truth, or to denounce that which is wrong, the voice of Christian witness is often silenced because the approval of men counts more than the approval of God. And so by our very silence we become partakers of their wicked ways. One of the dangers of this ecumenical age is that ecumenicity itself may become an idol, and that the Church, in order to win the approval of men and to maintain the spirit of unity among those whose views may be widely divergent, is tempted to compromise those great truths of which she has been made custodian. Is it any wonder then that the man of the world becomes perplexed and bewildered as he seeks to ascertain what the Church believes and what benefits she has to offer him which he does not already possess? And the sad outcome is that all too often with a shrug of his shoulder he dismisses the Christian faith as something which is not relevant to the world of today. Undoubtedly there is need for Christian unity, but it must be a unity which has as its foundation an uncompromising belief in the Incarnation and finished work of the Divine Saviour who said, “I, if I be lifted up …, will draw all men unto me.”

Blessings Assured

Two blessings are promised to those who fulfill God’s requirements. The first of these is a personal blessing and consists of pardon—“I will forgive their sin.” How gracious God is, both to the sinner and to the backsliding Christian. For the sinner who forsakes his ways and turns unto the Lord there is abundant pardon, and for the backslider who confesses his sins there is forgiveness and cleansing.

But notice that there is also a promise of national blessing—“I will heal their land.” God had warned Israel that one of the consequences of sin would be drought. It may be necessary, he said, “to shut up heaven that there be no rain.” Israel’s very existence depended on “the former and latter rains,” for without them there would be famine in the land. During the reign of Ahab the land experienced a sore famine, and only after the prayers of Elijah was the famine brought to an end, and the land healed.

Is there not much to remind us that the same healing power is needed in our land today? We live in times of spiritual drought and barrenness and urgently need those refreshing showers which alone can revive the parched ground. The world is in a state of tension and men’s hearts are failing them for fear. But let us not forget that God has promised blessing when men turn to him in penitence and faith.

Do you wish then to make a contribution to the national effort which can have far-reaching consequences? Do you wish to see that “righteousness which exalteth a nation” established in the land? Do you wish to see the “windows of heaven” opened and the blessing poured out? Here then are the conditions! “If my people, which are called by name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” If we by his grace are willing and able to fulfill the conditions, God will surely honor his promise.

END

It should be determined, once for all, that Sunday laws in our nation are not religious laws.

The decision of the United States Supreme Court of May 29, 1961, upholding the Sunday laws of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as health and welfare measures has been interpreted as a defeat to religion and the religious implication of these laws.

A weekly newsmagazine recently commented on “the unruffled detachment with which today’s church leaders view the disappearance” of a Lord’s Day consecrated to religion and rest. Referring to one denomination which heard a resolution reading, “The church should not seek, nor even appear to seek, the coercive power of the State in order to facilitate a Christian observance of the Lord’s Day,” it traced some of the indifference to arguments for separation of church and state.

These laws, designed to do good for all of the people, are poorly understood and little appreciated.

No one will deny that in the early years of our history they had a religious motivation, but this is not the basic reason we observe them. Mindful of the laws of God, the leaders of the government wrote into secular jurisprudence rules regarding the first day of the week. The first Sunday law in America, known as the Virginia Law, was passed in 1610, just three years after Virginia was colonized by Captain John Smith. The Constitution of the United States recognizes the uniqueness of Sunday in Article 1 (Section 7, paragraph 2) describing it as a day of rest for the President and, by implication, for the people.

As our country grew, many people were blessed by these Sunday laws. Men and women received protection from employers who might otherwise have required day after day of uninterrupted labor.

As early as 1782, the Massachusetts Sunday Law, which had an unmistakably religious origin, experienced a change in its Preamble with the addition of the words, “Whereas the observance of the Lord’s Day is highly promotive of the welfare of the community, by affording necessary season for relaxation from labor and cares of business, for moral reflections and conversations on the duties and the frequent errors of human conduct.…”

In 1885, the United States Supreme Court concluded that Sunday laws were welfare measures:

Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of rest are not upheld from any right of the government to legislate for the promotion of religious observance, but from its right to protect all persons from the physical and moral debasement which comes from uninterrupted labor. Such laws have always been deemed beneficent and merciful laws, especially to the poor and dependent, to the laborers in our factories and workshops, and in the heated rooms in our cities, and their validity has been sustained by the highest courts of the States.

The Supreme Court’s 1961 judicial determination regarding the Maryland law said:

In the light of the evolution of our Sunday Closing Laws through the centuries, and of their more or less recent emphasis upon secular considerations, it is not difficult to discern that as presently written and administered, most of them, at least, are of a secular rather than a religious character, and that presently they bear no relationship to establishment of religion as those words are used in the Constitution.…

Sunday laws do not violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. It has never been established in any specific case that Sunday laws have curtailed religious freedom. Economic injury has been established. A law that regulates secular activity on Sunday may make the practice of some religions more expensive. Every Roman Catholic understands this since he pays taxes to support public schools as well as the parochial school. Every Protestant who pays taxes to support his state university and who tithes to support his denominational colleges knows that the practice of his religion can be expensive. The cost of the practice of religion is determined by the dedication and conviction of the adherent. But the law does not make the holding of a religious belief a crime, nor does it force one to embrace a religion.

The Christian church does not need laws to support it, to encourage attendance or to grant financial support. Churches have benefited by Sunday laws, but these are not the only laws which they have found beneficial. Are we to oppose all laws that aid the Church? Is there any satisfaction in awakening in a society which has no law? A law that benefits others may benefit the Church as well.

By opposing Sunday laws shall we rob the millions of workingmen in our land of rights for which they have struggled many years? Thousands of these people labor in churches. They sing in the choirs. They teach in the Sunday schools. Thousands of them do not. By what pious logic can we oppose laws which have been a blessing to many?

Certainly the churches do not want to be used to break down the progress which has been made in so many areas of our fair employment practices. To gain an advantage over their competitors, some businessmen clamor for a day other than Sunday as a day of rest. This would leave them free for Sunday operations. But if such a practice should be legalized, those who observe Sunday might employ only first-day observers; those who observe another day might refrain from employing workers who keep Sunday. In dealing with the Pennsylvania Sunday Law even the Supreme Court commented on the suggestion that those observing another day should gain exemption: “This may be the wiser solution to the problem but the concern of the court is not with the wisdom of the legislation but with its constitutional limitation.” The Court then pointed out that enforcement problems would be multiplied. Businesses that open on Sundays would be given a competitive advantage. There would be cause to question the sincerity of a worker’s beliefs and the opportunity for discrimination in hiring, since an exempt employer would, of necessity, hire only those who qualified for the exemption.

To oppose Sunday laws would be to strike at the American home against the value of one day in seven when the family is together. The “new economic pattern” of business every day could undermine the home life of our nation by scattering the “day off” for different working members of the family. In fact, we might question whether the removal of Sunday laws might not seriously tamper with our freedom of religion.

Christians cannot afford to oppose laws which benefit so many if they propose to be concerned for the rights of their people and the total population of America.

Christians can strengthen these laws, however, by showing a respect for the Lord’s Day themselves. By making purchases on days other than Sunday, they can guarantee that their neighbor’s day of rest will not be broken. Merchants have said that if church people would refrain from making Sunday purchases, their places of business could remain closed.

“Never on Sunday!” A radio announcer made this comment after reading the news story of the 1961 Supreme Court decision on Sunday laws. He said it in humor. When Christians apply it to unnecessary business on Sunday, it can mean Christian concern.

And what about those who sincerely observe another day? We would urge them to continue to support the day which we now enjoy and at the same time to work for a recognition of their day as well. Today’s trend is toward a work-week of five days, not six, and certainly not seven. They will find many supporters coming to their assistance.

END

I BELIEVE that we have been losing round after round in the cold war, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and that, at virtually every point, the initiative still lies with the hordes of international Communism.

At the close of World War II, our forces stood triumphant on land and sea and in the air. We had at our command the mightiest array of military power in history. The flags of freedom were unfurled on every continent.

Had we had the understanding and the will, our diplomacy, backed up by this military and moral power, could have assured the freedom of the peoples of Europe and Asia and laid the basis for a stable peace. Of this I am convinced.

Yet, the past 16 years have witnessed a calamitous retreat from victory. We have suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of international Communism. We have retreated from position after position; we have committed folly after folly.

It is not in the tradition of the American people to accept defeat, or to respond to threats and bullying with mere paper protests. That is why they are restive today. Our people are convinced that the trend of the post-war years must be reversed and can be reversed. The past several years, however, have seen this trend accentuated and accelerated.…

If we have been losing the cold war, if we have thus far found it impossible to seize the initiative at any point, this is because of three basic failures.

First of all, we have failed to face up to the unpleasant fact that we are locked in a life-and-death struggle with an implacable enemy.

Second, we have failed to face up to the fact that this enemy wages war in an infinitely subtle and infinitely complex manner, that the so-called “cold war” is not a simple condition of hostile confrontation, but a mortal conflict waged by a thousand different means—a war in which the enemy offensive is integrated on every plane of human activity, the economic, the political, the diplomatic, the psychological, the social, the cultural—a war conducted by stealth and subversion and subtle psychological techniques.

Our third basic failure in the cold war is that we have been amateurs fighting against the most highly skilled and ruthless and dedicated professionals.

Because of the persistent innocence of our attitude, we have been horrified by each new act of Soviet aggression and perfidy—as though aggression and perfidy were not essential characteristics of international Communism. On the other hand, we have shown ourselves willing, over and over again, to forget the lessons of the past, to respond to each new Soviet blandishment, to negotiate new treaties in good faith when old treaties are terminated by Soviet bad faith.

The Soviets have bewitched us into accepting the division of the world into a “peace zone” and a “war zone.” The “war zone” embraces all those countries and territories that have not yet succumbed to Communist rule; and in this zone, according to the arbitrary, one-sided rules which we have apparently accepted, the Communists are free to seek power by military aggression where this is possible, and by subversion and infiltration where military aggression is not feasible.

The “peace zone” is synonymous with the Communist land empire. From this zone, the cold war is excluded. Against this zone, no matter how newly acquired these territories may be, counterattacks are forbidden.…

But above all, we have been paralyzed in situation after situation by our own sentimentality, by our almost passionate desire to believe that the Communists do not really mean what they say, that they cannot be as evil as they appear to be, that coexistence with them is possible, and that the cold war can be liquidated by making this or that concession.

If we continue to fight the cold war under these arbitrary rules and with these self-imposed limitations, it is historically inevitable that we shall lose it. If the Communists always attack and we always defend, even if we were successful in repulsing most of the Communist attacks, the ultimate victory of Communism would be a mathematical certainty.

That is why Khrushchev and the other Communist leaders are so arrogant today. That is why Khrushchev asked the assembled leaders of world Communism last year to synchronize their watches for the final assault on world capitalism. That is why Khrushchev could tell his comrades that despite his age, he still hopes to see the hammer and sickle of Communism triumphant over all the countries of the world.

Khrushchev and his comrades may well be right, if the free world does not succeed in freeing itself from the illusions and wishful thinking that have heretofore characterized its conduct, if it persists in refusing to face up to the total irreconcilability of Communism and Western civilization.

There is too great a tendency to accept Communist revolutions as irreversible and Communist regimes as permanent. This attitude lies at the root of our failure to take effective measures to deal with the Castro regime in Cuba.

The phenomenon of total dictatorship has, in fact, produced the phenomenon of the “total revolution,” in which entire peoples, including the military forces under supposedly Communist direction, have revolted against their Communist masters.

That the phenomenon of “total revolution” is not a freak or historical accident is demonstrated by the fact that we have had four such uprisings over the past nine years—in East Germany, in Poland, in Hungary, and in Tibet.

If such a total revolution against Communism were to take place in Cuba, its immediate success would be assured for the simple reason that the Soviet Union and Communist China would be in no position to intervene in Cuba as they did in Hungary and East Germany and Tibet.

I believe that Cuba is not only a place where we can seize the initiative and strike an effective blow for freedom; I believe that the security of our nation and of the hemisphere make it essential that we embark upon this initiative without delay and without equivocation. I believe that freedom can be restored to the Cuban people if we are prepared to give our unstinting support to the Cuban forces for liberation, in Cuba and abroad, and if we are prepared to invoke the Monroe Doctrine to proclaim a partial blockade directed against the shipment of Soviet military equipment and personnel to Cuba.

And if we act successfully in Cuba, it will have an impact that goes far beyond the confines of our hemisphere. I think it no exaggeration to say that the restoration of freedom to the Cuban people might very well mark the beginning of the end of the slave empire that the Kremlin has built up in Europe and in Asia.

The first step toward the building of an effective foreign policy, the indispensable step, is to accept the basic facts of our existence as they are, and to clear away the illusions.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Communism and Western civilization can get along, we will give up vain hopes of an easy way out and begin to make the stupendous effort in the field of free world armament and mobilization that must be made.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that the temporary easing of this or that individual crisis will bring about an era of good feeling or another “spirit of Camp David,” we will scrap the patchwork foreign policy of the past which has been essentially a policy of short-term reactions to Communist initiatives, and adopt instead a consistent, long-range program aimed at expansion of freedom and defeat of Communism.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Communism is accepted by its subject peoples, we will institute policies aimed at encouraging resistance behind the Iron Curtain with the consequent demoralization of the Red empire.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Polish Communists or Yugoslav or Cuban Communists are any less the enemies of freedom than Kremlin Communists, we will stop pouring out our substance in aid to Red dictatorships, which have received more than $4 billion from the American people in recent years, and instead divert that aid to those allies who are manning the front lines of freedom.

Freed from the illusion that the hard-core Communists who rigidly dominate the Communist world can be influenced by friendly demonstrations on our part, we will bring to an end all practices which blur and obscure the nature of the life-or-death struggle that has been forced upon us.

Freed from the illusion that we improve the world climate by soft-pedaling our criticism of Communist infamy, we can for the first time institute an effective program of bringing to the world the truth about the Communists, by each day dragging them before the bar of world opinion, indicting them again and again for the atrocities and crimes they have committed in enslaving one billion human beings, and convicting them in the minds of men for what they have in fact made of themselves, the moral outcasts of humanity.

Freed from the illusion that the way out of each enemy aggressive act is a coalition government which includes Communists, we will at last recognize that the government which includes Reds today will be controlled by them tomorrow, and that there is no substitute for standing firm against aggression from the beginning.

Freed from the illusion that the Communists are seriously interested in negotiating a just peace or indeed in seeking any honorable common objective with us, we will never again fall for such a ruse as the nuclear test ban negotiations which paralyzed our own technological development for three years while our enemies secretly moved ahead.

Freed from the illusion that the Communists can take part in any international organization or court without either poisoning it or subverting it to their ends, we will begin to think less and less in terms of divisive worldwide international organizations and more and more in terms of free world cooperation and unity.

Freed from the illusion that there is some easy way out of the present crisis of civilization, we will adopt a policy of strength, of risk, of sacrifice, of effort for every American.—U. S. Senator THOMAS J. DODD of Connecticut, in remarks to American Society for Industrial Security in Washington.

Ever since the brave street-fighters of Hungary placed the world in their debt by forcing the Russian bear to expose its fangs and claws for all to see, Communist stock has been declining on the international market. Today Secretary Rusk offers persuasive evidence for his contention that, among uncommitted peoples, Communism in the Sino-Russian style does not sell.

It must be obvious even to the unsophisticated Marxist that significant phases of the Russian “experiment” are a real liability, not relieved in the least by its Chinese copy, and by no means redeemed by Titov nor even by Sputnik. He—the Marxist—sees that if Marxism is to regain ideological initiative among the colonial nations rapidly assuming self-conscious statehood, it will have to shunt aside certain aspects of Sino-Russian Communism as at best aberrations, or at worst necessary historical stages now passed on the road to Utopia, neither normative nor essential elsewhere. This may be at least part of the meaning of Khrushchev’s desperate gamble in denouncing so explicitly in 1956 the crimes of Stalin—precisely to explain them away as a deviationist “cult of the individual,” and not essential Marxism at all. What he forgot, apparently, was that he who cries “stinking fish” may not find all fingers pointing accusingly in the same direction. Perhaps the strategy worked well enough at home to prevent, as Khrushchev told the Twenty-Second Party Congress last October, “the forces which clung to the old and resisted all that was new and creative” from gaining “the upper hand in the Party” (Report to CPSU, I, p. 142), but the world at large smelled a rat, not necessarily the same deceased one Mr. Khrushchev was exhuming. Nonetheless the Chairman told the Party in 1961 that “had the cult of the individual not been condemned … in the sphere of international relations, the result would have been a weakening of Soviet relations on the world scene and a worsening of relations with other countries, which would have had dire consequences” (ibid., p. 143). Did he mean by this language that Marxism can still hope to appeal to the world with fanciful sketches of a classless paradise dazzling by its dark light the horizons of tomorrow only by a repudiation of Stalinism?

Shadows Of The New Marxism

The dubious success of the Khrushchev maneuver cannot but stimulate other Marxists to attempt other approaches to the problem of stepping up the sale of Marxist ideology. It is not only an interesting theoretical question, therefore, but one of some moment to the Western world to speculate: What form will the “new Marxism” assume?

One thinks first of Trotskyism. After his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1928, Leon Trotsky became one of the first Marxists who sought with all his might, in book, pamphlet, and before the Dewey Commission, to distinguish genuine Marxism from Russian autocracy. “The bureaucracy,” he wrote in Stalinism and Bolshevism in 1937, “won the upper hand. It cowed the revolutionary vanguard, trampled upon Marxism, prostituted the Bolshevik party. Stalinism conquered” (p. 15). And Trotsky quite literally gave his life to proclaiming Stalin’s usurpation of “the old label of Bolshevism, the better to fool the masses” (ibid.).

But though Trotskyism found and retains adherents around the globe, it remains an abortive attempt to free Marxism from the incubus of Russian Communism. One reason is that Trotsky was too closely identified with the Russian Revolution really to disengage successfully his own views from its workings; nor, for another reason, did he wish to distance himself too decisively from it. Thus, even while bitterly attacking Stalin’s usurpation, Trotsky frankly admits to having himself predicted that bureaucracy would triumph in Russia if the revolution did not soon spread around the world. In short, Marxism is not likely to achieve revival as Trotskyism in our time.

Nor is it likely to win many friends by diatribes against Stalinists and Trotskyites alike such as is mounted, for example, in H. M. Wicks’s Eclipse of October, published in the United States in 1957. It is his intention, Mr. Wicks says, to document “the wide breach between the founders of the Marxist system and most of those who, today, profess to be its spokesmen” (p. vii). Before he has done, Mr. Wicks stands virtually alone: “The Trotskyists talk much of Marx and, like the reconstructed Stalinists (whom he has named ‘Mikoyan, Bulganin, Khrushchev, and Malenkov’) claim to be the sole competent interpreters of Marxism. But none with even the slightest understanding of Marx would take seriously, to put it mildly, the pretensions of either” (p. 454). Nor, one suspects, will many take very seriously the pretensions of Mr. Wicks to rehabilitate Marxism after his own image.

In what form, then, might Marxism hope to appeal to a world grown dubious of pronouncements out of Moscow or Peiping?

Perhaps in the form, I suggest, illustrated by Mr. John Lewis’ volume, also published in 1957, Marxism and the Open Mind. “Certainly the time has come,” Mr. Lewis says, “to develop and enrich our Marxism,” particularly, he continues, on the questions of “democratic rights … and (the) moral ideals which are independent of class interests …” (pp. xvi–xvii).

That Marxism can offer the world true democracy and socially sensitive ethical theory rests upon the fact, Mr. Lewis argues, that “Marxism is humanism in its contemporary form.… And the Marxist has thus to convince the disinherited, whether in the great industrial cities of the West or the fields and mines of colonial countries, that their very oppression could be the instrument of their emancipation, their entrance into an earthly paradise of material plenty and human justice” (p. 161). The carrot is the same, but it hangs from another string: “contemporary humanism.”

That this is the form in which Marxism-Leninism is also being offered to the world by Mr. Khrushchev and cohorts may be evidenced from the Program adopted by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its Twenty-Second Congress. “What is Communism?” the Program asks, and answers: “Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and full social equality of all members of society; under it, the all-around development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces through continuous progress in science and technology; all the springs of cooperative wealth will flow more abundantly, and the great principle ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ will be implemented. Communism is a highly organized society of free, socially conscious working people in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labor for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a necessity recognized by one and all, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people” (p. 67).

Except that Mr. Lewis says Marxism “is” what the Program says it “will be,” they are saying the same thing. And so the voice of the siren is heard once more in the land, not in the grim monotony of Stalin’s heavy accents but in the dulcet tones of the “humanist” Marx.

Marx’S Appeal To Humanism

Some such “return to Marx” may well be, apart from the course of world power politics, the next major ideological threat confronting the improving relations between what Professor Toynbee calls “the world and the West.” To expect to defeat this new challenge by a wave of the hand in the direction of Moscow murder trials or Peiping prison camps is not only naïve, it is dangerous. Look carefully and behold Khrushchev waving with us—and preaching Marxism as he does so. Sino-Russian brand Communism may—God grant—one day collapse, but even so the Marxist will still profess the most sophisticated form of secularism yet devised.

We will meet the new challenge only by soberly evaluating the claim of Marxism to be a vehicle for true humanism.

And first, what is meant here by humanism? Mr. Lewis says: “Behind the whole philosophy of Marxism there is passionate opposition to all relations, all conditions in which man is a humiliated, enslaved, despised creature. That is why Marxism is a humanism” (p. 146). While observing that so broad a description qualifies much more than Marxism to the claim of being true humanism, we may largely agree with Mr. Lewis’ assertion. Engels’ first major work, for example, The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in German in 1845, was written to document the contention that the condition of English workers under industrialism was “the highest and most unconcealed pinnacle of social misery existing in our day” (Moscow, Eng. ed., p. 3). But Engels finally includes all mankind in Communist concern: “Communism is a question of humanity, and not of workers alone” (p. 332).

So, too, the so-called youthful works of Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, first published in Moscow in 1932, have occasioned a number of volumes, in a number of countries, proclaiming Marx’s early humanism. German pastor Erich Thier, for instance, in his Das Menschenbild des Jungen Marx, published in 1957, equates the “young Marx” with Kierkegaard in his “existentialist” critique of the philosophy of Hegel, and his concern for the individual.

It is true, moreover, that in their joint critique of the left-wing Hegelianism of “Bruno Bauer & Company” published in 1845 under the title of The Holy Family, Marx and Engels together mount their vicious attack in the name of “real humanism” (p. 3). In her Reminiscences of Marx, his daughter Eleanor recalls that the phrase “Work for humanity” was ever on her father’s lips; and no doubt the great sacrifice of place, pleasure, pride, and prestige which Marx inflexibly imposed upon himself and his beloved family was laid, as Marx saw it, upon the altar of human progress. Mr. Lewis says, then, accurately enough and with pardonable exuberance: “It is not sufficiently understood that Marx’s own thinking was basically humanist. He recognized the worth of the individual personality, he blazed with indignation at social injustice, there was prophetic fire in his passion for righteousness” (p. 144).

Futhermore, it may be argued with some degree of plausibility that Marxist humanism remained substantially true to its origins in its twentieth-century exponents, Lenin and Trotsky.

And no doubt Mr. Lewis is quite correct when he says that there are Marxists today who are so “because they are dreamers as well as economists, and idealists as well as politicians, because they are stirred by pity and indignation, because they believe in justice and equality, because they are humanists” (p. 144).

What Is True Humanism?

The question is: Can Marxism be palmed off on mankind as idealistic humanism now that the appeal of Sino-Russian Communism has worn thin? For this—I am suggesting—is the face which Marxists will wish increasingly to display to a world grown suspicious of Khrushchev’s and Mao’s faces. This “return to Marx” will be proffered not only to cleanse the bitter taste left by the fruits of Sino-Russian tyranny, but more significantly to wrest from the democracies worldwide ideological initiative with its political consequences.

But is Marxism the vehicle of true humanism, and are then the Russian and Chinese autocracies but aberrations or way-stations to be bypassed and ignored? The uncommitted world is asking this question in making up its mind between Marxism and democracy. To answering it for ourselves the West may well devote more of its energies than it now does.

For the answer to this significant question is not recondite, though its demonstration and its propagation are not simple: Marxism is not and never has been a true humanism. Why not? Not only because it is irreligious, but essentially because it mutes the significance of the individual. Hegel, it is true, set out to “actualize the universal,” and, like Marx and Engels after him, presumably wished to preserve the infinite worth of the particular. But Hegel was to lose in theory, as Marxism has lost both in theory and in practice, all ability to preserve effectually the worth of the individual against the claims of the abstract collective.

When Marx surrendered to Hegelianism—if he ever escaped it—he cut off at the root the capability of his system to cope with real particularity, to protect real individuality, to promote real personality, to be a genuine humanism. And the course of Marxism-in-practice, writ large in the history of Russian Communism, amply demonstrates that anti-humanitarianism is not an aberration but an inherent consequence of Marxist rationalism. Communist brutality affords instructive commentary upon the awesome consequences implicit in a false ideology, seen as it were by laboratory experiment—from its seemingly innocent birth in the passionate humanity of the youthful Marx to its corrupted maturity in the cold, calculated inhumanities of Joseph Stalin. The rationalist abstractions enter history as the lethal enemies of the concrete particulars they were presumed to save. By all means the Marxist may wish to brush aside as a passing and incidental “cult of the individual” the era of Stalinism, and substitute in its stead a sentimental “return to Marxist humanism.” But history teaches us nothing if we ignore the laboratory test of this humanism provided by the Sino-Russian experience. Only the blind can fail to grasp the lesson of the “experiments,” and only the willful can thrust it aside.

It is more than ironic that Mr. Lewis delivered his lecture on “Marxist Humanism,” which is published in his book from which quotation has been made, in 1956, the very year in which Khrushchev was revealing the Stalinist consequences of Marxist humanism in the “secret speech” which told, and left half untold, the crimes of the most powerful exponent of Marxism the world has yet beheld. And while some Marxist “idealists” came at last to an agonized break with a Marxism which turned into Stalinism, Mr. Lewis set himself to achieving the redemption of a system patently at enmity, in its practical consequences, with the noble aspirations it counterfeits.

Loss Of The Real Individual

But Mr. Lewis and those whom he represents must be stayed long enough from their romp with “development” to be obligated—as Trotsky grimly obliged himself—to answer seriously the question: Why is Marxist humanism not humanitarian?

This is, as has been said, a crucial question, not of “enrichment” but of simple intellectual integrity, the more so when Marxism is posed as “the highest development of humanism.”

Let us for the moment willingly accept Marx’s passionate sentiments for justice as genuine; he suffered and surrendered much for them. Let us acquiese in the “early” Marx’s recognition of the “worth of individual personality”; and let us not deny that Engels, Trotsky, and Lenin subscribed more or less consistently to the same estimation of humanity. And then we may ask in all sincerity: Why does Marxism, professionally loyal to the master’s voice in every nuance, run amuck in unhuman, inhuman, subhuman brutalities of all kinds, practiced advisedly, deliberately, systematically against human beings by those very Marxists most “in the know” of what Marxism is all about?

This man, say, who so loved children and never was severe with them—while he coolly murdered their parents, if need be: Why?

This dictator who wrote on the “essence” of Marxism, and, as he did so, slew his ten thousands: Why?

The answer—or at least one significant phase of the answer—to such questions is, as I have already suggested, implicit in Marx’s Hegelian rationalism, implicit therefore in the very fabric of Marxism. This answer may, in fact, be found spelled out in the same book—The Holy Family—from which quotation has already been made. It is to be found in the same paragraph in which Marx and Engels proclaim their “real humanism.” They say: “Real humanism has no more dangerous enemy in Germany than Spiritualism or speculative idealism which substitutes ‘self-consciousness’ or the ‘spirit’ for the real individual man.…”

Quite so. Hegelianism, like all other rationalisms, has no role for the “real individual”—be it man or any other entity. And precisely so, the substitution of an abstract category like universal “self-consciousness” for the “real individual man” is indeed the most “dangerous enemy” which “real humanism” can confront. It could not be put more accurately.

But when Marx and Engels, for the purposes of advertising their “socialism” as “scientific,” chose to pour into the mold of Hegelian categories the notions of “matter” and “relations of production” in substitution for the notions of “spirit” and of “self-consciousness,” did they think thus to escape the thrall of the rationalism they had derided in the Bauers? Did they propose thus to safeguard the “real individual man” from his most dangerous enemy, not the content but the form of the abstraction? Did they think that by an abstract humanism they could protect the real human being from any number of crimes that may be perpetrated on man quite compatibly with the most passionate concern for humanity?

Whatever they thought, or hoped, they in fact tumbled headlong into the same trap into which they had so elaborately sought to push “Bruno Bauer & Company” in The Holy Family. That “real individual man” whom the Bauers had lost to view in the categories of spirit and self-consciousness, Marx and Engels equally lost sight of in what became the dominant category of their system, the Class. And the more they adhered to the schematic of Hegel’s Logic—thesis, antithesis, synthesis—to support their claims to “scientific” validation, and the more they thought, wrote, talked, and acted in terms of the class relations prescribed by these categories, the more Marxism came to leave that “real individual man” naked and defenseless, prey to the tactics, strategies, or whims of the dictatorial powers exercised nominally on his behalf—and prescribed by Marx as guardians of his salvation.

The Harvest Of Casualties

Not since the Inquisition has the sowing of abstractions brought forth greater increase in the harvest of concrete casualties. In the name of the Class, for the deliverance of the Class, to the continuance (or destruction) of the Class, the individual is sacrificed, submerged, victimized, destroyed. For, while the Class is rationally manageable in the recesses of the British Museum, where Marx developed his notions, it can achieve its “self-consciousness” in historical reality only by allowing this or that member, or clique of members (in theory the Communist Party, the “vanguard” of the proletariat; and in practice the schemer, like Stalin), to become its director and guide, with absolute authority and uncontrolled power. Moreover, because the abstract concept has no hold on the concrete event, even the system itself does not control the will of the dictator. Thus the “cult of the individual,” which Khrushchev and his clique exemplify even as they denounce it, is inherent in Marxist rationalization whenever a revolution is brought about, that is, whenever its abstractions must cope with concrete historical events.

By the iron fist of the dictator the massive power of the Class is given direction. By the dictator are “real individual” decisions made; and history cruelly revenges rationalism’s abstract and pretentious neglect of the singular by confronting the Marxist who comes out last in the melee with one ineluctable moment of reality: he dies alone, and in the act discovers his particularity even as it is taken from him. The hoax of the superiority of the universal is revealed in the flash of the particular assassin’s rifle or the snap of the particular gallows trap.

Professional Sentimentality

So in fact the most sincere and genuine Marxist concern for the plight of the proletariat protects no particular proletarian from prison or the gallows, or the threat of both—in the name of the proletariat! Such concern, however well meant, is therefore only sentimentality, confined to the emotions, neither effectual nor normative in history, as evanescent as the rest of Marxist “realism.” It is easy, therefore, for an abstract humanism to make common cause with the most brutal and finished practice of inhumanity. What Professor Bultmann called in his Gifford Lectures, “the historicity of man, the true historical life of the human being, the history which everyone experiences for himself and by which he gains his real essence” (History and Eschatology, p. 43) gains no validation from Marxist humanism because Marxist humanism, when genuine, is only sentimental by virtue of abstraction from the real man—and sentimentality is by definition and in fact incompetent to coerce the course of real events.

In Marx himself, I think, one may discern the same process exhibited by Marxism in history—the movement from “humanism” to “Stalinism.” Assuming, as we have, the initial genuineness of his passion for human rights, it is evident that this passion becomes ever more professional and doctrinaire as Marx’s theories develop, until at last there is no conflict in his mind between a dictatorship bent on destroying a whole class of men and his passionate concern for the rights of man. Progressively Marx estranges himself from real contact with the British proletariat, and more and more he retires to his study and the British Museum for abstract thought about the proletariat. His concern reckons with the individual the less as his theories comprehend the Class the more. And most of the last two decades of his life were spent in isolation, from which he scorned all practical efforts to meliorate in any way the real hardships of the real poor as inimical to the Class Struggle.

Marx demonstrates by his own conduct what Marxism repeatedly illustrates in practice, that the Marxist concern for the sufferings of the proletariat is dictated (and made futile) by the dialectic of history to which Marxism is committed. According to the Hegelian framework of the Marxist “theology,” the proletariat becomes the “suffering saviour” of mankind—not through or by virtue of its suffering, but by its revolutionary negation of the capitalist order through the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat became of supreme concern to Marx, not because it suffered, nor because he was touched by its suffering, but because it first of all embodied the motive force of history—for Marx accepted Hegel’s dictum that the womb of the future was the negation. Marx was concerned with, rather than for, the proletariat, therefore, not because proletarians as such died, were exploited, or came to beg at his door, but because in the dialectic of history all hopes of the future destruction of the bourgeois order hung on the proletariat. In this abstract sense Marx came to dote upon “the workers,” as did Lenin after him for the same reason. And all the while the plight of this or that worker elicited no response from Marx, nor from Lenin or Trotsky, at all. They gauged, in fact, the worth of the proletarian by the extent of his Class-consciousness, that is, his capacity for the subordination of his own entity to the abstract entity of the Class. Thus the finest expressions of Marxist humanism comport easily with the most brutal treatment of any particular human being; and to a man like Mr. Lewis, who is enamored of the dialectic, this fact provokes no sense of contradiction at all; or if it does, Mr. Lewis may comfort himself with the reflection that contradiction is, after all, the motive force in progress—let’s see where this one leads.

Mr. Lewis says that Marxism is “a scientific, a philosophical humanism” (p. 147). Again, he could not be more accurate. For if Aristotle was right in denying the possibility of a “philosophy of the particular”; and if Professor Maritain is equally right in arguing that the “contingency of the singular escapes the grasp of science” (Degrees of Knowledge, p. 35), then the very fact that Marxism is indeed a “scientific, a philosophical humanism” reveals precisely why it is a sentimental, a professional, an abstract humanism, capable of singular inhumanity in its historical and concrete manifestations.

Is Marxism, then, the vehicle for a true humanism?

Not at all. Nor can it become so until it surrenders its abstract categories and reckons effectually with particularity. But for Marxism to do this would be to surrender not only all claim to “scientific” validation, but its idealogical framework as well, leaving it merely “utopian” in Engels’ and Lenin’s most derisive sense.

This, then, can be at least one phase of the West’s answer to the “new Marxism.” An even more significant phase is a positive humanism of our own. For such a humanism, the category of the particular—if I may put it so—is neither scientific nor speculative, but religious. It is in Christianity that the “historicity of man” is secured and validated. The relations which encompass without destroying real individuality (and form it, as Professor Maritain argues in his True Humanism, into personality) are not those of the dialectic, but those subsumed under the concept of love—incorrigibly, ineluctably personal and particular. And the person remains ever, in love, the singular. Lenin may argue that “the genius of Hegel recognized (that) the individual is the universal” (Works, Vol. 38, p. 361), but for Hegel this “both … and” is equally “neither … nor” for, as Lenin adds, “the individual is opposed to the universal” (ibid.). And the resolution of this apparent contradiction is frustrated, not achieved, by the dialectic.

The never-present “moment” in Hegel saps the life of the particular of all significance, which the ever-present “moment” in Christianity alone can restore; for Hegel’s “moment” is ever a passage, ever the transition from Being to Nothing, while Christ’s “moment” is ever the presence, the inescapable “now” held in the hand of God, the IS as opposed to the BECOMING.

When, for example, the Marxist learns what it means to love the enemy instead of destroying him, he will no longer be Marxist. It is the duty of the Christian to show, also toward Marxists, that this goal can be achieved, in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.