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The Feminine Mystique and the Ministry

The mystique of the pastoral role is well known. There has always been a masculine mystique in the ordained ministry, but now, with the sudden influx of hundreds of women into the profession, it is logical to ask whether there is also a feminine ministerial mystique. If such a mystique exists, what is it like? What does it tell us about the church and about the profession of ministry?

What has long been a male-dominated, female-influenced profession is now becoming a male-majority, female-minority profession. Some male denominational executives and ecclesiastical functionaries predict disaster. They are outvoted, however, by those who assume a relatively easy transition to a dual-gender profession and those who see no logical or theological basis for excluding women.

Scant Data

The outcome is not likely to be disastrous. In fact, some benefits are already evident. On the other hand, the transition will probably not be as easy as some seem to think; more than our theology of a male clergy is being challenged by this gender shift.

As director of a confidential ecumenical counseling service for Wisconsin clergy and their families, I have had the opportunity to specialize in clergy issues and to hear those issues articulated across the full range of theological stances. My years of experience with male and female clergy suggest some answers to the aforementioned questions. And though there is not yet a great deal of data on women in the clergy, there is enough to suggest some trends. No, there is not a feminine mystique in the ministry -- yet. So far, female clergy are in that typical developmental stage of imitating the majority of their peers -- who happen to be male. The message in these tentative conclusions is that women have not yet consolidated the female experience of professional ministry. There will be some floundering before clarification of roles occurs. The church has not yet dealt with the full reality of the female presence in the clergy, nor has the profession.

Having gleaned same insights during my own years of ministry and in counseling both male and female clergy, I can offer some tentative deductions from the new and scant data on women in the clergy and from my own files on the personal and professional concerns of several hundred clergy of both sexes.

The oversimplified answers to the three earlier questions concerning the presence of a feminine mystique in the ministry require further discussion. I want to compare the typical male career track with the one emerging for women. Then we can note some typical issues that have surfaced in my counseling of women pastors, and finally we can risk some projections concerning future implications of the gender shift.

Rites of Passage

The typical career track for male clergy is shaped by five professional “rites of passage.” The first is the internal experience of the “call” to ministry. Here the young man acts out of an inner experience of some kind or accepts the suggestions of significant adults that he should enter training to become a pastor. He usually has or finds one or more model pastors to imitate. He proceeds through the normal steps of seminary training, ordination and denominational placement in his first pastorate. In this first church (Or the second one, if the first pastorate is brief) he undergoes the next professional rite of passage. He begins to experience the difference between his idealistic notions of the institutional church and its everyday realities. How he comes through this disenchanting experience often determines the style and attitude of his ministry.

Assuming that the young pastor settles into an appropriate and satisfying professional style, he comes to the third rite of passage about 12 or 15 years into his career. He now wonders whether this is the way he wants to spend the rest of his life. If he decides affirmatively, he must find new reasons and commitments, or reaffirm the old ones.

About ten years before retirement, he encounters a fourth rite. He must cope with the accumulation of years and worry about being downgraded in his church moves. Or he may make maximum use of accumulated experience and skills, if he finds suitable professional opportunities. But in this role he must identify positively or negatively with midlife issues and project this identity successfully to peers and parishioners.

Passage through rite number four points the pastor toward the final one, the change from full-time to part-time or retired status, with all its incumbent demons and rewards.

There are variations in the oversimplified career track noted above, but my purpose is to show the

similarities and variations evident so far as women traverse these professional rites of passage. They may develop significant passage points quite different from those of their male colleagues.

The Feminine Career Track

The experience of the first rite of passage for the women clergy I have talked with varies from the male experience in the following ways: The young woman is likely to have a similar inner experience of a mystical “call,” or in some other way feel led to make a conscious decision to train for the ministry. But her role model and her experience of verification from significant adults usually vary from that of her male counterpart. There are not many female pastors yet. Therefore, the aspiring female minister’s model is often a woman who has fought (or is fighting) the battle for acceptance, or she identifies with a nongender generalized model of the pastor. She is not nearly so likely to receive encouragement from a number of adults in her pursuit of the ordained ministry. She must essentially initiate and sustain the early motivation within herself. If she persists in this career dream, she can now move rather easily through seminary and, in a growing number of denominations, through ordination and placement or the receiving of a call.

Her encounter with the second rite likewise varies from the male’s. If she had difficulty finding a parish or placement, she had to abandon some of her idealism early. And if she had to fight hard, she may soon be asking the question of the third rite of passage: “Do I want to spend the rest of my life in this career?”

The data so far indicate that a woman who gets this far tends to stay for an appreciable period of time -- probably because she had to be self-motivated to begin with. Since she was attracted by the challenge of the ministry, she is not quite so fearful of conflict as her male counterpart tends to be. But, given the minority psychology of this new phenomenon, it is possible that she may be staying because her feminine presence is still exciting to male peers, because she is needed as a “token female” by denominational executives, and because lay backlash is not yet threatening.

Women pastors have not yet been around long enough for us to note any pattern in their handling of midcareer issues. It is likely that they will encounter the same self-doubts and resentment as do male clergy at pejorative assumptions about chronological age. And it seems likely that they will have already assumed the easy grace of age or a tough-minded stance toward conflict, depending on whether their career paths were smooth or difficult, and on their personality type.

If a woman pastor arrives at retirement age with her pastoral identity intact, she will likely become a revered model for the next generation of women clergy.

Issues Unique to Women Clergy

Now let me turn to some counseling issues I have encountered with women clergy. It is apparent that they must deal with the typical challenges which men also face in this profession. They must deal with the inordinate need for approval clergy seem to have. They must cope with unusual schedules and the reactions of husband or family to the demands of the job. They must handle the issues of intimacy with parishioners. They must find a style and purpose for their ministry. They must discover a personal and corporate faith that nourishes their ministry. And they must cope with institutional politics. Beyond these typical challenges, several are emerging as unique to women clergy. It is not yet apparent whether these are socially conditioned, a function of female personality types, or a combination of the two.

The unique issue that surfaces most clearly is the need for a “mentor.” Gail Sheehey in her book Passages points out that women often feel a need for a mentor to support their entry into a professional field. We find that women clergy, especially young ones, seek approval from a significant male. They need to have him explain the rules of the game for the profession and to experience his guidance and support until they feel confident in themselves. The social and psychological implications of this process require more years of data for thorough study and examination.

The second unique issue is the dual-career phenomenon. A married woman’s career is still often regarded as secondary to her husband’s. The crisis comes when her career demands run counter to his: when weekly schedules conflict; when it comes time for her to move to another church and he is not ready to move; when child-care arrangements must be worked out. Similar problems arise with male clergy, but the male career has more often been assumed to be primary. Another variation occurs when both spouses are ministers,

The role of sexual ‘behavior’ in the clergywoman’s career also has some unique dimensions. If she is physically attractive or has a style which men experience as sexually attractive, she is likely to feel that she is being treated as a “sex object.” With the permissive direction in sexual ethics now in vogue, she must succumb or have convincing reasons to resist such pressure. We have not yet come to terms with sexual intimacies among peers in the clergy. The advent of women clergy requires re-evaluation of policies and theology regarding sexual behavior between the sexes and with the same sex. Old implied standards are either poorly understood or inadequate for the intimate intermingling of clergy peers.

Somewhat related is an issue faced by unmarried women pastors. Men often feel threatened by the intellectual and authority roles of these women and by their ability as pastors, and therefore are reluctant to initiate or share a close relationship. The woman who is strongly attached to her profession may angrily ask: “How can a career so important to me have such a penalty attached?”

The woman pastor also faces the challenge of role identity. Should she simply emulate her male colleagues? Will she find approval if she acts like the male clergy? Is there a unique female version of ministry? Can laity accept female pastors? The pressure of this issue is evident as men and women, clergy and laity, ask gender questions about the profession. So far we have found that women clergy are tending to imitate the male tradition.

A final unique challenge is that of leadership. I am speaking particularly of what is usually called the “prophetic” role of clergy. Can a woman minister speak Out on sensitive issues in her church and be accepted? Can she command acceptance of her decisions and judgment? Those questions are obviously troublesome enough if the minister is male. Our experience shows that women tend either to avoid potential conflict issues, or to give the sensitive issue a “sexual politics” dimension and therefore gather a loyal group of sympathizers to the cause. The clergy role has always had some so-called “feminine” dimensions (sensitivity, nurturing, etc.). but only men were allowed to fulfill them in clergy roles.

A Variety of Styles

If there is not yet a feminine mystique to the ministry, are there typical feminine styles? It’s probably too soon to identify a female style of ministry, but the indications we have show the following:

1. The Change Agent Style. Women who highlight social justice and sexual politics tend to project a crusader image. If they offend key persons, they are usually categorized as “women’s libbers” or as “bitchy” or “pushy” and relegated to the ranks of other unacceptable stereotypes. If they are fortunate and psychologically astute and professionally competent, they may win grudging or admiring support. But the drain on physical, emotional and spiritual energy often takes its toll. I have encountered several such women pastors who manifest what is called the “burn-out syndrome.” They experience depression, cynicism and loss of confidence, and ask such questions as: “Was all the struggle worth it?” “Where do I go from here?”

2. The Innocent Questioner Style. Such a woman seems genuinely puzzled by the reaction to her being a pastor. She can’t seem to understand why she can’t move easily into a traditionally male role and be accepted.

3. The Tentative Style. Such a woman realizes she is breaking a social taboo, but seems willing to test out the possibilities.

4. The Exhibitionist Style. This style develops for the woman who enjoys the attention of being unusual.

Trends and Possibilities

The ideas I have presented are limited, because of the relatively scant material available and the inadequacy of our male-dominant pattern to assimilate the new possibility. But the data seem to suggest the following projections for the church and our profession:

1. Our random flounderings in the changing milieu will continue for the foreseeable future. We carry an emotional and theological residue from centuries of male-dominated church leadership.

2. Because of male dominance, men as well as women have been limited in their perception of God and the community of faith. Sensitive learning of new modes is essential for both sexes, but this growth will not come easily.

3. It is likely that a storm is brewing in the profession. With the overabundance of clergy, with the church’s current acceptance of the novelty without coming to terms with the reality, and with the likelihood of a backlash from the laity, we can expect to have a large group of angry ordained women in the near future. They will wonder why seminaries gave them easy entrance but failed to prepare them far the struggle. They will be angry with denominational executives who refuse to fight for their placement. They will feel betrayed by male peers. They will be disillusioned by laity who are unaccepting of their ministry. They will struggle with the “queen bee” syndrome among themselves. (The “queen bee” is the woman who achieves her own ambitions and then tries to hold other women back.) And they will be angry at themselves for getting into this bind.

4. Denominational policies and social stereotypes will strain, then adjust to this gender shift. Doctrine and theology will catch up belatedly.

5. The reaction from laity (in the church and in secular settings) will be accepting only to a limited degree. They will likely respond in terms of political and economic biases rather than theological ones, for the theological education of the laity has suffered in recent years. But we can expect laypersons who are informed theologically to come forth with some strong theological statements for and against women clergy, making for a lively debate after the fact. And the lay response will likely lead to some deeper concern about the selection, training and placement of clergy.

6. It is possible that some ordained women will their places beside  male theological giants. That development could assist the church and society in coming to terms with the full meaning of sexuality and caring love in God’s creation.

7. Some clergy couples will find creative solutions and develop enlightened marriage styles (some have already done so). These trends may enable women clergy to make a unique contribution to the pastoral role. If denominational executives and lay leaders are aware of the opportunity, the church will benefit.

These projections are tentative. Some of them may seem frightening. In reality, there is reason to be hopeful: beneficial consequences can be expected when both sexes can make their full contribution to the leadership of the church. And, if we believe our gospel, the church belongs to God and is therefore in good hands, though human leadership may falter.

God is trying to tell the church something with this sudden gender shift in the clergy. It is apparent that we still have difficulty hearing when God says anything new.

Manners and Ministry on the Internet

The most dominant form of pastoral contact in my congregation is e-mail. I love it. And I hate it. I love it more than hate it, but the contest is not over. In fact, it has just begun.

The Internet allows me to contact more people more often than can be done by way of the telephone or home visits -- the two predecessor modes of pastoral communication. Home visits sound downright quaint these days when most people are seldom at home or are too busy and adamantly prefer that the pastor not call. The telephone was not an improvement on the home visit because it is less direct and intimate than person-to-person encounters. The Internet is even more impersonal. A person is not very likely to confess a sin or share a fear or tell a secret on the phone. Face-to-face, over time, they may feel safe to do so.

But not all intimacy is lost on the Internet. It creates a sense of privacy such that people often say remarkable things, just as they bellow intimacies into their cell phone while on the commuter train. Oddly, they seem to think no one is listening. The solitary nature of Internet communication creates a unique kind of intimacy between pastor and people. We can maximize its benefit by assuring parishioners that we are the only ones reading our e-mails. But we all know that piracy is a possibility especially in open, public institutions like most churches are. We can also respond with hands out for more personal contact.

The very person who tells an awful "secret" by e-mail may be the most resistant to contact in person. "My husband just beat me up" may not mean "Come over and help stop this violence." In fact, it may mean just the opposite. The person may unburden only to go back into the very shell that the e-mail creates and protects.

If the Internet is a mixed blessing when it comes to pastoral contact, it is also a mixed blessing when it comes to frank discussions. The Internet can encourage the saying of mean things. More often than not, we should have pushed the delete rather than the send button when we are having a fight or expressing a disappointment.

Our congregation has made a rule that the staff may not fight on the Internet. They have to fight in person. The "no electronic fight" rule works, for the most part, and we are hoping to extend it to parishioners as well. Why? Because people complain a lot in parishes, and they cloak complaints in e-mails rather than risk the genuine exchange of conversation. We call this bamming, rather than spamming. It lacks courtesy and fairness and it makes many of us afraid to turn on our computers.

Another problem is the ease with which we can send copies to others. When I "yell" at you electronically, I can also let other people know that I am doing that, either by copying them boldly or copying them blindly. The use of the copy button can be a terrible form of gossip. Frank conversation between mature people needs to Involve face-to-face time with privacy if there is to be any hope for resolution. When "everybody knows about the fight, it is much harder to go to that place of grace known as saving face. We lose face in the copying.

The Internet is not only a form of interpersonal contact. It is also a way to build community -- within families, congregations or clusters within congregations and within political groups. Since community-building is an integral part of any congregation’s mission, the Internet is a magnificent tool. But this positive feature also has the same problems as pastoral contact via e-mail: We may let others overhear what we are saying to our brother or sister in Omaha or Raleigh. We may also issue information that embarasses somebody.

I encourage people to be in touch with their loved ones far away and to ritualize such contact. Grandparents love hearing from their children. I love knowing my brother is a minute away while also being 600 miles away. I enjoy regular Internet contact with my husband while at work. There is a personal unburdening that can happen by e-mail that builds community When people feel well supported, pastors have less work to do. In a culture in which people don’t even have time to go bowling together, such contact keeps us connected, mitigates human loneliness and relieves the tedium of daily work and routines.

The Internet also has spiritual and evangelical uses. If they choose, the members of my congregation receive a daily e-mail from the church that includes a short devotional with a prayer. Many still use devotional booklets, but most use the daily e-mail prayer, which we call "Manna." In the Friday e-mail we mention what the music, scripture and sermon title will be on Sunday and encourage congregants’ participation. Many will respond that they can’t come because of something going on in their lives but will nonetheless read the scripture or pick up the sermon on the Web. The sermon gets posted on the Web around 9 A.M. on Sunday morning. A member or browser can keep up with what is going on without being in church on Sunday morning.

Community is built by ritual contact, by knowing that someone else has read the same devotional as you this morning. And community is built on frequent contact. Because 80 percent of our congregation is under age 60, it is very Internet-friendly. In fact, most of our new members come in the door because they found us on the Web. Yes, there is a disadvantage to those seniors who don’t want or choose to go on line. As our parish gets younger, we will find ourselves increasingly Web and e-mail friendly.

A class issue lurks here: some people with whom we might want to communicate simply cannot afford computers. These liabilities need to be compensated for. Changing meeting times -- which seems to happen hourly here -- is a breeze when you can count on others to be monitoring their computers. But we have to be careful to call the one or two members of each group who are not online when new information is sent.

In addition to supporting people, transmitting information and building community the Internet has enormous capacity for prophetic mission. Before the Internet, I probably wrote a dozen letters a year to my elected officials. Now I can do five times that. My voice is amplified, and so are the voices of many others. In a country in which only half of the people who can vote do vote, this general amplification is excellent for democracy and for peace and for justice.

Some guidelines for e-mail: Do use it to contact people, but limit the number of messages. My limit is a hundred e-mails a day and 12 phone calls. I play this numbers game to keep the contacts from taking over my life and world. Don’t use the Internet to gossip and never hit the copy button without asking yourself whether you are gossiping or engaging in self-enhancing or self-protecting communication. Do use the Internet to build community in your parish and in the families in your parish. Teach people how to stay in touch, and how to touch each other. Don’t use it as a substitute for hugging, eye contact or being together.

The Nuclear Reality: Beyond Niebuhr and the Just War



As a commissioner to the 1980 General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, I was convinced that the church’s new peacemaking efforts needed “a good dose of Niebuhr.” I saw “The Call to Peacemaking” document as pacifistic and deficient in its failure to affirm the “just war.” In a brief speech to the Peacemaking Committee, I closed this way:

I dare say that if “The Call to Peacemaking” were being written just after World War II, it would read differently. With the memory of Munich, it probably would include a statement something like this: “There can be no security in a world whose obsession with peace leads to appeasement.”

Then I quoted from Reinhold Niebuhr’s letter to a pacifist who was reluctant to favor the Allied war effort against Hitler:

Your difficulty is that you want to try to live in history without sinning . . . our effort to set up the Kingdom of God on earth ends in a perverse preference for tyranny, simply because the peace of tyranny means, at least, the absence of war (Love and Justice [Westminster, 1957]).

This was the dose of realism I felt my Presbyterian brothers and sisters needed.

Now, two years later, I am in a different place. Although my background includes graduation from West Point, Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army War College, overseas service in Okinawa, Germany and Vietnam, combat duty as a company commander in Korea and chaplain assignments at every level of the army, including the Pentagon, none of this experience has prevented a gradual but inexorable change in my viewpoint during the past two years. No, I did not become a pacifist. In fact, I will probably continue to bristle when the facile warmongering stereotype is unfairly and uncharitably applied to the many fine leaders of our armed forces. Likewise, I will continue to defend those military chaplains whose self-identity and role definition is so clear that they lend no credence to Niebuhr’s remark, “Kings use courtiers and chaplains to add grace to their enterprise.”

What has changed is my view of nuclear warfare and nuclear weapons. The change is by no means unusual or unique. In the May 1982 chief of chaplain’s newsletter, I referred to the people of Europe who feel they are “living on the battlefield.” Then I shared my own feelings:

I believe that statement can go further: We are all living on the battlefield. We are all vulnerable. For years I have put this out of my mind, knowing perhaps in some distant or subliminal way that it was true. But it never “grabbed” me. I just really did very little thinking about it. That is not true recently, however. This new awareness is happening to many people the world over. I believe this is of God, and I believe this is something God is doing in human history today. Doubtless it is striking fear into the hearts of many, leaders and policy-makers especially. This awareness of itself may not automatically determine immediate specific policy, but it is right that human beings be aware that it is wrong to be nonchalant, unthinking and indifferent about the real danger of the possible destruction of humankind. I welcome this widening awareness as a divine intervention, a warning and a signal, possibly a life-and-death “last chance” for human civilization. Life is a precious gift of God, willed by our Creator, but it cannot continue unless we also will that it does.

If I were to revisit the Peacemaking Committee now, I would say to them that the question is not whether we are to “live in history without sinning,” but whether we are to live in history at all. If we were to apply Niebuhr’s real politics, with its ready acceptance of the inevitability of conflict, to the present nuclear situation, it could well mean “a perverse preference for the war of mutual annihilation, simply because the war of mutual annihilation means, at least, that the other side doesn’t win either.” In speaking of plans for a protracted nuclear war, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said recently that nuclear war was not winnable but that “we certainly are planning not to be defeated” (New York Times, August 9, 1982).

In view of continued presidential certification and support of the government of El Salvador, I would conclude, “There can be no peace in a world whose obsession with security leads to denying the claims of human rights and justice.” Finally, I would still admit that under certain circumstances, weakness invites aggression. Peacekeeping has a place. The United States Army War College motto, “Not to promote war, but to preserve peace,” is the idea behind the Armed Forces motto, “Peace through strength.” But now I would have to ask, “When does ‘peace through preparation for war’ make war a more likely possibility?” Certainly I would say, “There can be no peace in a world whose obsession with security leads to a never-ending arms race.”

Reinhold Niebuhr saw history as a “long tale of abortive efforts to establish peace,” with failures due “either to the effort to eliminate the factor of force entirely or to an undue reliance upon it” (Moral Man and Immoral Society [Scribner’s, 1932]). During the rise of Hitler and World War II, Niebuhr moved from his early pacifism to focus on the pacifist’s unrealistic effort to eliminate the factor of force. But now it appears that Niebuhr’s comment on “an undue reliance upon the factor of force” was more prophetic. The undue reliance on force by both the United States and the Soviet Union is characterized by nuclear overkill, indiscriminate arms peddling, and the wasting of precious human and national resources in an unending arms race.



Given these conditions and Niebuhr’s ability to shift his thinking, I wonder if he were living today whether he would not sharply limit his application of real politics. He reminded us that realism, not moralism, guides the conduct of nations. Nations relate to one another simply on the basis of self-interest. It is unreasonable and moralistic to expect nations to reflect the virtues of individuals -- hence his book title, Moral Man and Immoral Society. Niebuhr chided moralists for failing to understand “the brutal character of the behavior of all human collectives.” The stark realities of power and conflict must be accepted as inevitable. Indeed, “to the end of history the peace of the world . . . must be gained by strife.”

Such ideas from Niebuhr’s real politics blunted moral attacks on war and helped provide an easy conscience to a generation of American policy-makers. But now the case for realism appears to be moving beyond Niebuhr. Real politics, with its acceptance of the inevitability of conflict, is no longer realistic -- not when two nations with a total of more than 50,000 nuclear weapons can essentially obliterate one another. We must go beyond real politics, from self-interest to shared interest. Despite their competing systems, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. have a shared interest in survival. Niebuhr states it clearly:

The peril of nuclear war is so great that it may bridge the great ideological chasm between the two blocs and make them conscious of having one thing in common: preference for life over death (The Structure of Nations and Empires [Scribner’s, 1959]).

In order to realize this preference, we must go beyond Niebuhr’s realistic observation that groups and nations relate predominately on a “political rather than ethical” basis. If we cannot, then we must face the likely doom of the human race. Ironically, a recently revealed memo which former president Harry Truman wrote in 1958 indicates that he feared precisely this failure.

The nuclear reality not only takes us beyond Niebuhr and real politics; it also takes us beyond the “just war” as a justification or rationalization for the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear warfare is indicted, not vindicated, by the limiting categories of just-war criteria such as due proportion, just means, just intentions and reasonable possibility of success. The burden of proof is on those who would say otherwise. A limited nuclear “just” war can be theoretically conceived of in a textbook scenario, but is it possible in the real world? War is confusion, chaos and hell, not predictable sequences. Even if nuclear weapons were to be used as counterforce, and even assuming that noncombatants could be protected, the question of escalation would remain unanswered -- not to mention long-term environmental or genetic damage. How can we know that any use of nuclear weapons will not result in catastrophic escalation?

In 1978, General Creighton Abrams was said to have interrupted a discussion about limited nuclear war “with an expletive, followed . . . by the statement, ‘One mushroom cloud will be reported as one hundred, and that will probably be the end of the world.’” The technical discussions as to when or whether nuclear weapons can be used without violating just war criteria are irrelevant unless the question of escalation can be answered with certainty.

I suspect that a number of these conclusions are shared by many middle-of-the-roaders who have thought of themselves as just-war adherents. Our realization that the just war theory provides no justification for nuclear weapons or nuclear warfare has involved painful reappraisal, a “shaking of the foundations.” However, some of us were prodded and assisted by the cavalier comments of leaders in the current administration. European nuclear protest has been accounted for as “Protestant angst” (Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Richard N. Perle) which was “bought and paid for by the Soviet Union” (President Ronald Reagan). On this side of the ocean, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman blamed “a few uninformed and overly idealistic religious leaders.”

This trivialization of nuclear concerns was a misreading of the across-the-board struggle taking place with issues of life and death, of the widespread sense that this may be the “last chance” for human civilization. Since our leaders did not have the sensitivity to feel the moral earnestness of literally millions of European and American people, it is legitimate to ask how sensitive they are to the moral issues themselves.

In good will we might patiently wait for signs of moral leadership, but the facts of history do not offer us this choice. We were the first and only nation to use atomic bombs in war. It was a presidential decision; the American people were not consulted. Furthermore, in our armed forces schools, military officers in tactical war gaming make the assumption that nuclear “release” will be forthcoming in any major war. Where did such an assumption come from?



All these factors heighten the importance of the present nuclear debate. If there is any hint from our political leaders that the use of nuclear weapons is regarded once again as one of the prerogatives of power in a “close hold,” then at the very least the nuclear debate ought to serve the purpose of forcing openness, or what Jacques Ellul called “unmasking.” Using nuclear weapons does not fit into the “If I felt the American people needed to know. . .” category. History, if there is to be a history at all, must not repeat itself.

But the only guarantors of this history are the American people themselves. As reported in the Washington Post, former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara implicitly assigned this responsibility recently when he attempted to account for the tremendous nuclear buildup by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in the last 15 years. Robert Scheer asked, “But how did this happen?” McNamara’s response: “Because the potential victims have not been brought into the debate yet, and it’s about time we brought them in. I mean the average person.”

In order for this participation to take place, “the average person” must overcome a passive feeling of inferiority which blindly blesses government policy, and is content to “leave it to the experts.” The question is not whether we trust our leaders, but whether our leaders can be made to trust the American people and bring them into their confidence. Gatekeeping is a permanent feature of any bureaucracy.

At lunch with me one day in the Pentagon, a senior Defense Department official complained about Roman Catholic bishops who, in involving themselves in nuclear issues, were “tampering in geopolitical areas.” I responded by defending the bishops’ right to transgress the sacred soil of geopolitics; the possible killing of human beings is certainly a moral question. “Potential victims” have a right to be brought into the debate and the decision-making process concerning their fate.

“Potential victims” must also break through their sense of foreboding and inevitability -- the prime ingredient which could bring us to a nuclear holocaust. In reflecting on the Truman-Churchill decision to use the atomic bomb, Niebuhr said, “The question is whether they were not driven by historic forces more powerful than any human decision.” Will competitive forces “more powerful than any human decision” once again drive us toward use of nuclear weapons and ultimate disaster? Or will we decide that human decisions can and will control our destiny?

It now appears that the U.S.-U.S.S.R. arms race has taken on “a life of its own.” Completely apart from the “Soviet threat,” the reason this is so is that we have ascribed an idolatrous power and ultimacy to weapons, which has deepened our dependence on them and increased our feelings of inevitable disaster. Therefore our president “orders” another 17,000 nuclear weapons. And he proposes to sell $25 billion worth of arms in a single year to a waiting world. The familiar statement “If we don’t, someone else will” is a sign of the paralysis of “inevitability” and lack of moral leadership -- not a valid reason for arms peddling.

Last year Frank C. Carlucci, deputy secretary of defense, described what he believed to be an election mandate: “We are obliged to rearm our country.” Then, in anti-gun-control language, he said, “A casual appreciation of history reveals that neither weapons nor armies start wars. People start wars.” This, of course, is nonsense, even though it is true that people start wars. What is so tragic is this nonchalant approach to weapons, as if they were just another commodity such as wheat or silver. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s sense of history in his “final blast” before retirement was more accurate:

The lesson of history is: When a war starts, every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon has been available. That is the lesson learned time and again. Therefore, we must expect, if another war -- a serious war -- breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form. That’s due to the imperfection of human beings (New York Times, January 30, 1982).

Even though Rickover seems given over to the probability of nuclear extinction, he nevertheless seems to appreciate that weapons are not “neutral,” that their presence introduces a compelling temptation for human beings to use them.

Jacques Ellul probed the deeper reasons why human beings must get control of weapons and weapons systems or be controlled or destroyed by them. In a technological society, Ellul points out,

People think that they have no right to judge a fact -- all they have to do is to accept it. . . . A striking example of this religious authority of the fact is provided for us by the atomic bomb. Confronted by this discovery, by this instrument of death, it was quite possible for man to refuse to use it, to refuse to accept this fact. But this question was never even raised. Mankind was confronted by a fact, and it felt obliged to accept it. All the questions which were raised after that were secondary: ‘Who will use this weapon? How shall we organize our economy with it in view?’ But no one ever raised the question: ‘Is this line of action itself good or bad?’ The reason is that ‘the fact’ itself at the present time seems to be something which is beyond good and evil (The Presence of the Kingdom [Seabury, 1967]).

Actually, Ellul is not quite correct in stating that the question of refusing to use the atomic bomb “was never even raised.” The matter was never considered in any public forum. However, the Committee on Social and Political Implications in its report to then-Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson stated prophetically:

The use of nuclear bombs for an early unannounced attack against Japan is inadvisable. If the U.S. were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons (quoted in Alan Geyer, The Idea of Disarmament [Brethren Press, 1982]).



This committee foretold the consequences of the nuclear “Fall.” They underscored Ellul’s contention that nuclear weapons command a religious authority over our lives.

We cannot reverse the Fall, but what we can reverse is our continued complicity in nuclear idolatry. The time has come for the American people to overcome the religious authority of nuclear weapons by questioning their basis in “fact.” Neither real politics nor the just war theory can provide a legitimate basis for their existence or use. The “fact” of nuclear weapons has been superseded by a more compelling fact: that human beings have a right to live free of the risk of mutual nuclear annihilation. This is the essence of European and American nuclear protest.

Paul Warnke’s comment that the START talks were “conceived in sin” (as a result of grass-roots pressure) indicates the reluctance of the leaders of this administration to face the primary moral question of nuclear arms control and elimination. Having accepted nuclear weapons as “fact,” these leaders have concentrated on secondary questions concerning nuclear capability and use. Now it is time for our leaders to exercise their considerable talents in the “politics of self-interest” by stopping the nuclear arms race instead of continuing to justify and stockpile the means of mutual suicide.

Albert Einstein once said, “We live in an age of perfect means and confused ends.” Our politicians and the technicians of violence have shown great dedication .to perfecting the means for human extinction. Now it is time for them to back off and ask, “to what end?” If they cannot exercise a commensurate moral leadership in addressing this question, then it is time for the leaders to be led.

Marriage: The Impossible Commitment

The causal explanations for the rise in the divorce rate are as numerous as the breakfast cereals on the supermarket shelf.

I

Extended adolescence. Young people grow up more slowly, find employment later, depend on parents longer but marry too early. Before the adolescent becomes an adult, he or she makes an adult commitment. Thus the theory develops that the first marriage is only prelude to second marriage and a greater maturity.

Women’s liberation. The entry of women into the job market, their demand for freedom, their interest in being cared for as well as caring for others all place a strain on marriage as we have known it. If these were not legitimate interests on the part of women, blame could be placed. The tragedy is the price women are paying for their “liberation” and the price men are paying for their refusal to engage in systemic change. Women suspect that career success is incompatible with two things: marriage and motherhood. Men have structured their lives in appreciation of that view for years. Systemic change would equalize both the burdens and the advantages of marriage and career.

Masculine shortcomings. Men, it is said, don’t know how to relate to strong women; therefore, as women grow stronger, men withdraw. Centuries of mothering have prepared them for this choice. The ego-protecting chauvinism of those who prefer the relationship they were taught as boys to expect combines with the women’s movement theory like fire to dynamite.

Economic issues. The need for two incomes in many American families removes the woman from the home, by her choice or not. The family needs a “wife,” once man and woman both take on a job. Nurture and housekeeping are the tasks left undone by dual-career couples. Inflationary pressures mount, rising consumer expectations join them, and income takes priority over relationship, marriage and family.

The genetic explanation. Now that reproduction is possible without sexual union, some say that men and women no longer biologically need each other. According to this theory, our conflicted state is reflective of an evolutionary determinism to which technology has educated our psyches.

Lack of commitment. Both the right and the left indulge in charges here. From the left comes a self-righteousness about the capability for intimacy (“You have been to Esalen, haven’t you -- or at least been analyzed?”). The right displays the stiff upper lip, the assumption that suffering builds character and that marriage involves a legitimate suffering. The issue, however, is not one’s capacity to make a commitment but rather the question of whether one is committed to the self’s agenda or the selfless agenda. Moralisms grow in the fertile soil of difficulty. A “tsk, tsk” attitude only exacerbates the problem, applying a veneer of legalism over a tangled human ambiguity.

A rise in sexual expectation. Birth control having liberated sex from procreation, recreation substitutes as the goal. We are told that it is wrong not to pleasure ourselves (what a switch!), and so we righteously insist on pleasure. For those who married before the advent of this compulsive liberation, another pattern had been established; the discovery of sex as an end in itself has caused many individuals to search for greener pastures.

The apocalyptic interpretation. The culture is dying or dead, we have lost faith in ourselves and our institutions, and therefore we experiment desperately with new forms. Is the institution of marriage in worse shape than the schools? In the cry that all have sinned and fallen short, there is a small comfort. At least we are doing no better or worse as married individuals than we are doing in our other social roles. Nothing is more absolving of personal responsibility than the apocalyptic theory.

Peer pressures. Covenantal relationships are fragile. Without social support for the institution of marriage, with the sense that “everybody’s doing it” -- that is, divorcing -- marriage becomes a minority behavior and suffers all the pressures thereof.

The Turner thesis of American history. “Go west, young man”: The sad and ridiculous procession of older men leaving their wives for younger women would support this thesis. We would be fools to assume that the great American escape would restrict itself to the continental landscape. Escape/avoidance is the archetypal American response to difficulty.

II

I would give all these theories some credence, and then add one more. Carl Jung talks about the psychology of marriage as essentially that of the container and the contained, the paradigmatic structure of male and female. One must envelop and structure the other; relationship requires hierarchy. The church historically has understood marriage as a sacrament, an adventure into impossible commitment which has divine sanction, encouragement and blessing.

The rhetoric of equality between men and women has disallowed Jung’s hierarchical model, and the cultural if not actual death of God has made the pursuit of impossibilities meaningless. We’ve had enough of exciting adventures in the secular scene. There being no bottom line to failure, we simply fall through to the bottom.

I think marriage, particularly of the exalted, egalitarian model now being pursued, is impossible. One cannot do it alone, nor can two. With the aid of neither transcendence nor forgiveness -- a bottom line on the freedom to try again after failure -- relationships are thwarted. And marriage being the primary relationship, it becomes the first to evidence the signs of an unredeemed and unredeemable brokenness.

Do I argue for God out of desperation, out of the profound experience of human failure and brokenness? Not at all. Surely at the limits of our own experience we do reach out for something more. But that search is damned by its own dependent origin. God’s gifts are hard enough to receive even when they come to successful human beings.

Rather, I argue that the profound and seemingly unmanageable pressures which marriage faces are a spiritual and not a psychosocial matter, one having to do with questions of human destiny: are we to live for ourselves, or for others, or for both in some yet undiscovered dialectic of being? Can we deny ourselves pleasure, care or stimulation and avoid the Freudian trap of destructive unconscious resignation? If we give up, is there any comfort beyond our own selves? If we hang in, is there any support beyond what we ourselves can muster or our friends provide? Just how ultimate are our personal decisions? To questions of destiny, questions of nature adhere.

III

The question of purpose intersects that of nature and destiny. Is marriage an end in itself -- or is it part of a nurture fitting us more ably for larger purposes? Until the spiritual condition of modern persons is addressed, marriage will continue to be a victim of a larger malaise.

To those struggling with marital decision and to those living with the consequences of their decision -- whether commitment or separation, marriage or divorce -- the same words can be spoken. Human relationships are not carried out in a human vacuum. Persons unresponsive to issues of nature and destiny, the recourse when suffering comes, the purpose of their life and times, will find relationships difficult. Without commitments in these areas, the self is not formed concretely enough to include an other. Emptiness encounters emptiness, and confusion reigns.

Persons uncertain about themselves and their faith dare not engage in an intimate relationship unless all they expect are psychosocial benefits, of which there are some. But to get married for these reasons and to expect to stay clear of more ultimate issues is to beg the sanity and sanctity of human experience.

Few are able to live close to another and, at the same time, live with such aridity. Few can resist their own urge to understand levels above and below the superficial. Marriage is a covenant involving our deepest selves -- our sexuality, fertility, generativity, talent, inadequacy and death. It is our link to past (parents) and future (children). Its very nature is intolerant of superficiality. Until the larger questions of destiny, nature and purpose are grasped coherently and communally, marriage will continue to be the victim of a formerly Christian culture that has lost its identity and therefore is incapable of maintaining its institutions.

Intimate relationships maintain their victim status so long as psychosocial explanations dominate. The myth of no connections, implying culture’s demonic power and otherness, is a stranger to reality. Reality demands that we own the culture we have permitted to exist, and that we accept complicity if not responsibility.

IV

The church can aid the married and the unmarried only by refusing the victim posture and by incarnationally addressing the questions of nature, purpose and destiny. All the “marriage encounter” weekends in the world will not save what theology has relinquished.

The church’s message is primarily neither psychological nor economic. It is the good news that speaks a word of freedom to these and all other factors. The good news is not that the God of love delivered us from difficulty and failure but rather that he permitted, by his own death and resurrection, our entry into these experiences with hope. Herein lies the power we have to risk the impossible -- namely, fulfilling an intimate relationship. We are not condemned to a life of petty and possible dreams; rather, we are free to lift our sights to the humanly impossible and there to wager the accompaniment of God. More than failure, we fear the petty dream and the absence of engagement in human reality.

What do we ourselves deeply want? Do we prefer the script of unredeemable failure to the drama of God? With what degree of freedom do we acquiesce or claim a destiny? Which vision of our nature will claim us? How much suffering will we tolerate or choose, and for what purposes? Precisely to what extent are we able to repress and avoid the question of creation? Did we, in fact, make ourselves? Are we the pride and pinnacle of it all? Can we bear that loneliness? Are we here for a reason?

God, after all, in an eschatological yet primitive promise named our life as good. Then God claimed it in new covenant and named it saved. We are the ones damned by and desirous of the alternate options -- the script of unredeemable failure, the purposelessness, the assumptions of impossibility.

Perspective soon becomes the issue. Marriage is not the only stage on which we act. I see nothing in the Word itself that elevates matrimony to the level of salvation. If anything, celibacy is the preferred state, biblically speaking. In the land of ultimate questions, our fidelity to one partner is a small region. That we choose safety or hope, possibility or impossibility, love or hate is a matter of another order. It’s a matter of the spine in the soul, the lust in our heart rather than the lust in our behavior.

What is not penultimate is the basis for our decision. Do we love beyond our own capacity, give beyond our own capacity, or hope beyond our own capacity? Once the energy conversions occur, we are responsible for our decisions and live beyond continual regret over consequences in a knowledge of hope. These are the points at which we take our marriage vows seriously -- where we accept the help of God. If brokenness occurs following that release to larger power, then we move into that brokenness in hope. God will call us to love again, or in another way. We will risk brokenness again, or in another way. These risks mark our journey, our nature and destiny.

Some hurts will never go away, nor should they. But they are not the final word about us or God. We may have failed; we may have failed another; another may have failed us. Or these sins may tangle with each other in an unmanageable web. Trust can be irreparably broken between people.

V

The stakes are obviously high. If small homogeneous communities can’t work, then what chance is there for larger heterogeneous communities? If we cannot acknowledge our personal failure with one partner, on what basis do we risk future encounters? But we risk the truth of the gospel by living as though its promise were already here. I know of no other way to appropriate it save in the risking. Possibility is the stone we throw at the Goliath of impossibility.

The issue of hope is confronted in our faith about our capacity to change and in our faith about the other’s capacity to change. The faith is not a duty but rather an attraction to the deeper self within us whom we wait to know as one that confronts and goes beyond brokenness. In both instances, by our own power we will fail. In the power available to us in the incarnation, we find another situation. It is not necessarily the power to “save a marriage” but the power to assure that love and justice are motivating factors, that they be both the means and the ends of our action.

The gospel provides few answers about how we should live or what decisions we should make. It is not a recipe for right living. The gospel transcends the law only to name a more difficult law -- that of love, first of God and then of each other, even ourselves. There is no provision in the Word which avoids on our behalf human ambiguity. We make our own decisions and live with their consequences. But in a -love that will not let us go, God provides the clue to our purpose, nature and destiny. We are, quite simply, called and empowered to the task of love and to its consequent justice. We are called simultaneously to provide each other with the sanctuary of love and the challenge of justice, and to expect the other to provide the same for us. This expectation is not private or individualistic; it is the mission of humanity, not only of spouses.

To the extent that our marriages are based in and led by those purposes, we are responsive to our created image. To the extent that they are not, whether by pursuit of law’s safe moralism or in rebellion against it, we miss the mark. In Paul’s words, we sin. And then, and only then, do we move from the power and presence of God.

We can never know whether we have loved enough or hoped enough. That is a luxury denied to us, and which we deny by the safety of self-deception. We can go only so far in those directions and then relax in the love that knows no limits and the hope that has no bounds. And there at the edge of our own limits, I believe, we are surprised by the transformation of impossibility into possibility.

How Christians Can Cope with Inflation

The Western industrial nations have undergone an astonishing growth in prosperity since World War II. In the United States the living standard of the average family has doubled in the past three decades. But this unprecedented rapid growth in real income may now be ending, say some economic prophets, or at least ought not be allowed to continue. Skyrocketing energy costs, diminishing supplies of nonrenewable resources, exploding population, and the alarming build-up of pollutants in our air, water and soil have brought together an unlikely chorus of conservationists, economists, politicians and scientists who warn that limited growth, zero growth or even economic decline will be forced upon us.

Even if the doomsday visions do not materialize, we must still cope with our fluctuating economy and its rising rate of inflation. Many Americans today have the idea that their economic condition is worsening. As we pay the price of high inflation and heavier taxes, we complain to one another that we can no longer afford things we used to buy routinely. When bill-paying time comes, we bemoan the near-impossibility of trying to make ends meet at today’s prices.

Redefining Satisfaction

But despite all this “poortalk,” as we have called it elsewhere (“Let’s Cut the Poortalk,” Saturday Review, October 28, 1978, pp. 24-25), the fact is that buying power is not less than it used to be. Even if we take into account increased taxes as well as inflation, real disposable income for the average American has risen more than 50 per cent in the past 25 years.

Why, then, do we not feel 50 per cent more affluent than we felt in the early 1950s? Why do yesterday’s luxuries become today’s necessities, leading most people to feel that their needs are always slightly greater than their income? And what trauma may we expect if the predicted limits to growth do in fact materialize and we enter a slow-growth or no-growth era?

Several principles from psychological research can help us understand the emotions that accompany economic fluctuations. These concepts assist in explaining our insatiability, and they prompt us to consider alternative routes to personal security and well-being.

The first principle is the adaptation-level phenomenon. Although research on this topic is relatively recent, the idea dates back to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. The basic point is that success and failure, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are relative to our prior experience. We use our past to calibrate our present experience and to form expectations for the future. If our achievements rise above those expectations, we experience success and satisfaction. If our achievements fall below the neutral point defined by prior experience, we feel dissatisfied and frustrated. This principle was plainly evident in the high suicide rate among people who lost their wealth during the Depression. A temporary infusion of wealth can leave one feeling worse than if it had never come. For this reason, Christmas-basket charity may be counterproductive, making the recipient family more acutely aware of its poverty the other 364 days a year while doing nothing to relieve the impoverished state.

If, however, the improvements persist, we adapt to them. Material progress does not sustain a sense of increased well-being, since our experience is recalibrated so that what was formerly seen as positive is now only neutral and what was formerly neutral becomes negative. Psychologists Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell have noted that this principle, well grounded in research, predicts that humanity will never create a social paradise on earth. Once achieved, our utopia would soon be subject to recalibration so that we would again feel sometimes pleasured, sometimes deprived and sometimes neutral. Increased material goods, leisure time or social prestige will give pleasure only initially. “Even as we contemplate our satisfaction with a given accomplishment, the satisfaction fades,” note Brickman and Campbell, “to be replaced finally by a new indifference and a new level of striving.”

This is why, despite the increase in real income during the past several decades, the average American today reports no greater feeling of general happiness and satisfaction than was the case 30 years ago. Moreover, cross-national surveys on rich and poor nations do not reveal striking differences in self-reported happiness. Egyptians are as happy as West Germans; Cubans are as happy as Americans. “Poverty,” said Plato, “consists not in the decrease of one’s possessions but in the increase of one’s greed.” Assuming that inequality of wealth persists, there is a real sense in which we shall “always” have the poor (Mark 14:7). The poor remain poor partly because the criteria for poverty are continually redefined.

The ‘Psychology of Affluence’

A recent study of state lottery winners illustrates the principle. Researchers at Northwestern University found that people felt good about winning the lottery. They typically said that it was one of the best things ever to happen to them. Yet their reported happiness did not increase. In fact, everyday activities like reading or eating breakfast became less pleasurable. It seemed that winning the lottery was such a high point that life’s ordinary pleasures paled by comparison. The phenomenon cuts both ways: paraplegics, the blind and other severely handicapped people generally adapt to their situation and eventually recover a normal or near-normal level of life satisfaction. Human beings have an enormous adaptive capacity. Victims of traumatic accidents would surely exchange places with those of us who are not paralyzed, and most of us would be delighted to win a state lottery. Yet, after a period of adjustment, none of these three groups departs appreciably from the others in moment-to-moment happiness.

The adaptation-level phenomenon implies that the transition to a no-growth economy would have negative psychological effects, at least in the short run. The rapidly rising prosperity of recent decades has become deeply embedded in people’s consciousness and in their expectations for the future. Surveys indicate widespread anticipation of continually increasing affluence. In one University of Michigan survey, nearly half of those who reported feeling satisfied with their present standard of living said that the absence of further increases would be “disappointing” or even “disturbing.”

This “psychology of affluence,” as Bernard Strumpel calls it, has permeated the thinking of Americans at all income levels, from the corporate executive down to the welfare recipient. According to Strumpel, “Satisfaction with standard of living in the United States is largely a response to a dynamic phenomenon, to the change in the level of income and standard of living rather than to the level itself” (Economic Means for Human Needs [University of Michigan, 1976], p. 26).

Clearly; the adaptation-level principle, together with the fact that Americans most frequently mention personal economic considerations as their reason for being happy or unhappy, suggests that an end to the growth of economic prosperity would produce a temporary decline in reported happiness and satisfaction with life, even if the actual level of economic prosperity stayed the same. If one seeks life satisfaction through material achievement, a continually expanding level of affluence is required to maintain one’s old level of contentment.

Differences and Discontent

The second insight from psychological research is the relative-deprivation principle. Whereas the adaptation-level phenomenon is rooted in changes in our own experience across time, the relative-deprivation principle is based primarily on comparison with other people. The basic point is that success and failure, happiness and discontent are also relative to what we observe others like ourselves experiencing. We evaluate our present experience not only in terms of some absolute internal standard of success or happiness, but also in relation to the rewards our peers receive. If our rewards are greater than those received by others whom we perceive to be of similar background, education or occupation, we experience happiness and contentment; on the other hand, if our rewards fall below some weighted average of the rewards accruing to our peers, we feel a sense of righteous indignation. A salary raise for a city’s police officers will temporarily increase their morale, but it may deflate the morale of the local fire fighters.

If human beings were perfectly rational and objective creatures, individual differences in the level of satisfaction based on social comparison should balance out. Half of the people in any group would perceive that their rewards were above the group s average, and thus feel pleasured, while the other half would perceive themselves as deprived. However, since humans are neither perfectly rational nor objective, most people in any group are likely to feel dissatisfied with their economic situation, Researchers have found that those individuals who are objectively below the average for their group do indeed express dissatisfaction, but those objectively above the average are often equally dissatisfied. According to R. K. Merton, at each income level Americans seem to want just about 25 per cent more than they have, with only the extremely wealthy segment of society showing any sign of income saturation.

More Deserving Than Others?

Two additional phenomena fuel the relative-deprivation experience. Recent psychological research has devoted considerable attention to a self-serving bias in our view of reality. People generally perceive themselves as more admirable and deserving than others in their peer group. This phenomenon has been observed numerous times in laboratory experiments. It is also evident in several national surveys. Most business people perceive themselves as more ethical than the average business person. Most people regard their own views as less prejudiced than is typical of their community or even of their friends and neighbors.

The human tendency to see oneself as better than others is surely a source of much discontent. When a company or an institution awards merit salary raises, at least half the employees will receive only an average raise or less. Since few see themselves as average or below average, many will feel that an injustice has been done. The shortest line of all would be composed of those who feel they were overpaid.

Note that people’s impression that they have been unjustly evaluated does not necessarily signify actual injustice. Even if God himself prescribed the salary increases according to his most perfect justice, many would still be upset -- unless their self-perceptions distributed themselves in conformity with the true distribution of employee excellence, which they surely would not. A fixed-percentage or fixed-increment salary increase does not resolve the problem. Many people may then feel that equal pay is, for them, inequitable, since they are more competent and committed than most of their colleagues.

The resentment that accompanies high inflation -- even in times when wage increases keep pace with prices -- partly reflects the self-serving bias. Economist George Katona has observed that people tend to perceive their wage increases as the reward for their talent and effort, and thus they see price increases as cheating them of gains which are rightfully theirs.

The dissatisfactions bred by self-serving pride are compounded by a second psychological phenomenon -- the principle of upward comparisons. Laboratory experiments indicate that when people are given the opportunity to compare themselves with various other people, they generally choose to measure themselves against those whose performance or rewards have been superior rather than inferior to their own. Similarly, highly educated privates in World War II, whose chances of promotion were very good, exhibited more discontent with their prospects for promotion than did their less-educated peers who actually stood less chance of being promoted. The reason? According to R. K. Merton and A. S. Kitt, the well-educated soldiers chose to compare themselves not with their fellow privates, but with their educated peers who had become officers.

It seems that when climbing the ladder of social status, people look up, not down; their attention is focused on where they are going, not on where they have come from. This principle of upward comparisons presents problems for social planning, since it partially negates the benefits of governmental policies designed to upgrade the educational and occupational levels of the lower-income segments of society. As a family or employee group increases in affluence and social status, it elevates the comparison standards by which it evaluates its own achievements. Paradoxically, this means that actual gains in income, possessions or status may be offset by psychological losses stemming from the change in comparison group. Liberation movements by raising their adherents’ aspirations and expectations, may simultaneously stimulate increases in their actual achievements and in their perceived relative deprivation. Becoming a feminist is probably not initially going to alleviate a woman’s frustration with her lot in life. In the short run, at least, she is as likely to feel more frustrated.

Psychologists have found no upper bounds for the rising aspirations embodied in this principle. The ladder seems infinite, so unless we renounce the climb, we will be forever comparing ourselves with others above us. We are like rats on a “hedonic treadmill,” requiring an ever-increasing level of income and social status just to feel “neutral.”

The Pursuit of Happiness

This sounds a bit pessimistic. Is there any cause for optimism? Taking a cynical viewpoint, we can draw some consolation from the fact that the adaptation-level principle works in both directions: if personal or societal economic pressures force us to adopt a simpler life style, we will eventually adapt and recover life’s balance of happiness, discontent and neutrality. This approach is more traumatic than necessary, for the principles discussed above can also be used to speed up the recalibration and smooth the transition during any period of economic change. To this end we offer the following suggestions.

If we feel deprived, we can first analyze our present life satisfaction in light of the adaptation-level principle, pinpointing recent changes in income or status and evaluating how much effect each has had on our happiness. Most of us will realize that past fluctuations in income, material possessions or social status have had only a transient impact on our satisfaction.

Perhaps that is why the Declaration of Independence specifies only the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right, since our elation over an achievement always fades into neutrality, only to be replaced by a new level of striving. Just becoming aware of this fact can be a first step toward gaining mastery over the adaptation-level phenomenon. Recognizing the relativity of our perceived deprivation can diminish our feelings of actual deprivation. Realizing our past captivity to our appetites can open us to a new perspective on life such as the one Jesus taught in his Sermon on the Mount: Happy are those who renounce selfish ambition. One shall find abundant life by losing one’s life, not by clutching at things; simple living unclutters the heart and makes room for those things that have ultimate value.

Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher-slave, urged likewise: “Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.” The Preacher of Ecclesiastes expressed a similar sentiment:

I have also learned why people work so hard to succeed: it is because they envy the things which their neighbors have. But it is useless. It is like chasing the wind. They say that a man would be a fool to fold his hands and let himself starve to death. Maybe so, but it is better to have only a little, with peace of mind, than be busy all the time with both hands, trying to catch the wind [Eccles. 4:4-6, TEV].

This is not to commend apathy and fatalism. Epictetus cautioned us to distinguish between those things that are in our power and those that are not. If the source of our perceived deprivation is subject to our control, then we should struggle mightily to correct the problem. If  however it lies outside our power, we should accept our situation with calmness and equanimity.

A Liberating Perspective

Second, we can make a conscious effort to reduce “poortalk,” that peculiar affliction that shows up whenever middle-class conversation turns to economic issues. Over and over people complain that they are underpaid, defeated by inflation and taxes, and no longer capable of affording their family’s needs. Some think that such mutual commiseration is harmless, but research has indicated that what people say influences how they think and feel. The very act of complaining about unwelcome economic changes may therefore increase our discontent. Poortalk also focuses our attention on ourselves in a way that blinds us to the needs of others. A typical example of poortalk’s myopia is the case of the Michigan congressman who argued against a tax on “gas-guzzler” cars on the grounds that they are driven by people who “need” large vehicles to pull boats or trailers.

Third, by sensitizing ourselves to the self-serving bias, we can prepare ourselves to handle the twinges of anger and frustration that come when it seems that we have been treated unfairly or have not been given just reward for our accomplishments. On such occasions, we need to do some hard-headed, objective evaluating. Knowing that such a bias permeates our self-reflection may prompt us to search our pride and find the peace that accompanies true humility.

Fourth, we can exercise choice in the selection of our comparison groups. We can resist the tendency to measure ourselves against those higher on the ladder of success, and instead choose to compare ourselves with those less fortunate. Earlier generations were taught to perform such comparisons by way of “counting one’s blessings.” Today we can gain the same benefit by means of selective exposure to comparison groups. We can avoid settings in which we are surrounded by other people’s luxury and wealth. We can even go out of our way to confront true poverty, to drown our relative deprivations in the sea of absolute deprivation that exists for so many human beings. Discovering how relatively small our problems are can make us more sensitive to real poverty. It can give us an appreciation of the extent to which some people’s unmet needs -- clean water, adequate nutrition, medical care -- are things we take for granted. Realizing this will not only sensitize us to the suffering of the truly impoverished; it will also help us develop an attitude of gratitude for what we have.

Finally, Christian faith encourages us with the good news that our struggles will not endure forever. Authentic Christian hope is not built on a make-believe escape from life’s frustrations and agonies, but it does promise that evil, deprivation and heartache are not the last word. At the end of his Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis depicts heaven as the ultimate liberation from the relativity of experience. Here creatures cannot feel deprived, depressed or anxious. There is no adaptation-level trauma, for happiness is continually expanding. Here is “the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” This resurrection hope does not eliminate the ups and downs of day-to-day life, but it does offer a liberating cosmic perspective from which to view them. To paraphrase Rubem Alves, the melody of the promised future enables us to dance even now. As a folk hymn of the St. Louis Jesuits puts it:

Though the mountains may fall,

               and the hills turn to dust,

Yet the love of the Lord will stand

               As a shelter to all who will call on his name

Sing the praise

               And the glory of God.

 

Here on earth we will never completely escape the “hedonic treadmill.” But by becoming aware of the relativity of our appetites, by reducing our poortalk, by consciously selecting our comparison groups, and by viewing life from the perspective of resurrection faith, we can glimpse the radical liberation of the Psalmist: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I have everything I need.”

Measuring Church Growth

Objective information on the dynamics of church membership growth -- and lack thereof -- is crucial, especially in a time of decline. Leadership myths and factional claims too often become the language of misunderstanding and the weapons of internal conflict. Well-intentioned denominational programs for membership recruitment have been based on fragmentary evidence, parochial success, and the personal experience of the leadership group. Hard statistical data have been difficult to find. Comparative information on the patterns of growth or decline in different denominations or in different communities has been almost nonexistent.

Recently the Hartford Seminary Foundation, with the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, assembled a new base of information derived from mainline denominational experience since the beginning of the Eisenhower era. Over the two-year period 1976-78, a score or more of academic and denominational researchers gathered periodically to share information on the fluctuations in mainline Protestant denominations and the social context in which membership changes occur. The resulting research has been edited by Dean R. Hoge and David A. Roozen, and published by Pilgrim Press under the title Understanding Church Growth and Decline, 1950-1978. Based on controlled studies of mainline Protestant denominational bodies, the inquiry provides the most comprehensive collection of data gathered in the past half-century.

Unfortunately for those seeking simple answers, the comprehensive quality of the research frustrates any single resolution of the complex problems surrounding the declining membership in mainline denominations. The researchers made no efforts to announce consensus on either the problem examined or the programs recommended. But in their open dialogue, they articulated the issues and compared their data on a common ground. Research cannot determine questions of value and faith, nor can it decide which approach is “the most Christian.” But the information can help decision-makers devise the programs which will work best with certain groups and at what cost.

In developing programs for membership recruitment, for example, numerous styles of evangelism have been attempted, proclaimed, frustrated and often denounced. If we cluster these programs into three basic approaches, the recent data can provide insight into the application of these approaches to mainline church ministries. The first approach advocates clarity of meaning in membership; the disciplined church life; distinctive Christian congregations; and the necessity for evangelical zeal. Dean M. Kelley has put this appeal most forcefully in his watershed book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing. A second approach is associated with the missiological studies of gospel “receptivity” among particular peoples, as developed by Donald McGavran and associates in the Institute for American Church Growth. This approach has produced such upbeat books as How Churches Grow, How to Grow a Church, Ten Steps to Church Growth and Your Church Can Grow. A third approach reaffirms the historic emphasis of mainline Protestant denominations on membership appeal through dual responsibilities of care for individual souls and concern for the welfare of the whole society. This public as well as personal function of the mainline churches has often been associated with The Christian Century and the National Council of Churches.

These three approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they are sufficiently distinctive to provide a set of questions for which the recent studies suggest interesting new insights.

The Marks of a True Church

Dean Kelley published his powerful but winsome presentation in 1972, when denominational losses were undeniable and comprehensive explanations were unavailable. In the past several years, no approach has received so much attention or contributed so much to an understanding of the church. Kelley’s charts and statistics compared growing and declining churches, with a devastating judgment on mainline denominations. He argued that mainline Protestant churches were declining because they were too weak to adhere to the marks of a true church. These marks might be summarized as (1) institutional strictness, (2) religious distinctiveness, (3) theological conservatism and (4) evangelical zeal. Using as examples religious groups which were growing, Kelley urged commitment to the marks of the church -- a move which he said would result in stronger churches.

The clarity of language which makes Dean Kelley so appealing also makes his approach measurable for testing in congregations and denominational programs. At many levels, researchers looked for his marks and measured the correlations between the Kelley thesis and congregations which were growing or declining. In studies of mainline Protestant congregations, in which the researchers controlled for socioeconomic factors and demographic changes, the marks were no more likely to be found in growing congregations than in declining ones. By contrast, the social contextual factors (socioeconomic data and demographic changes) determined between 50 and 90 per cent of the growth or decline of local church membership. What is happening in the church is not as important as what is happening around the church. As a comprehensive solution to the problems of membership growth and decline, the Kelley thesis is inadequate.

However, Kelley’s approach is significant in two dimensions: it is highly effective in particular kinds of communities, and it is very appealing to an identifiable segment of the population.

In older areas of larger cities and in nongrowing suburban communities, growing congregations exhibited the characteristics Kelley predicted: higher demands on their members, separateness from their community, a faith they defined as “conservative,” and a willingness on the part of members to recruit others for the church. Kelley’s “marks of the church” seem obvious. But in content, these characteristics were significantly different from what he had anticipated: (1) growing congregations made more demands on their members, but they often perceived themselves as extended families; (2) they were separate from the community, but community groups were significantly more likely to be using church facilities; (3) they defined their faith as “conservative,” but they were far more likely than declining congregations to be active in the community seeking to organize for people in need; (4) they recruited church members, but typically, membership recruitment was not well organized or thought to be of the highest priority. The commitments of such congregations were as deep as Kelley had suggested, but much broader than he had anticipated.

Dean Kelley’s principles were vividly exemplified by persons who already felt alienated from society -- economically, politically, psychologically or spiritually. Persons with such feelings of deprivation seemed to express their faith in more exacting language, through more structured and disciplined communities and more in personal piety than through social causes.

Kelley’s thesis was not universally applicable; for example, his marks of the church were noticeably absent from growing congregations in rural areas and medium-sized towns, and from ethnic congregations and churches in growing suburbs. However, the disciplines of faith (conservative with a broad social conscience) were apparently a factor in the growth of congregations in nongrowing communities.

Baptizing a Principle

Research by the Institute for American Church Growth is primarily concerned with the factors which contribute to gospel receptivity among particular populations. Faced with the same data which suggest that the social context will determine the relative limits of church growth (50 to 90 per cent), leaders of the church growth movement have proclaimed that the church is not helpless: we can choose the context in which growth has the best chance to occur. Churches are encouraged to target their mission to the kinds of people who can hear them best. Rather than argue against the contextual analysis of membership growth, the Institute for American Church Growth has made an ally of the facts.

In Your Church Can Grow, C. Peter Wagner has succinctly stated the basic principles of church growth. These might be summarized as follows: (1) commitment -- the church (especially the pastor) must want to grow; (2) identify our people -- members must look for others who are similar to themselves in values, culture, heritage and religious expectation (called the “homogeneous unit”); (3) receptivity -- the church must look for those persons within the homogeneous unit who are most receptive and then must be ready to receive them; (4) priority -- the church must be willing to eliminate unproductive elements from its own programs, and to abandon unproductive segments of the larger population.

Data on growing congregations in growing suburban communities provide a prototype which exemplifies the principles enunciated by Wagner: (1) the congregation and the pastor are committed to growth; (2) the community has already been prescreened to provide a homogeneous unit of people who have mutual interests, share the same culture, socialize freely and feel at home with one another; (3) the resources of the congregations are often “big enough” to absorb new people easily into various activities; (4) with a priority being institutional growth, suburban congregations typically resist ecumenical alliances (labeled “hypercooperation” in church growth literature). In growing suburbs, Wagner’s principles are statistically correlated with growing mainline congregations.

Identification of the homogeneous unit is a distinctive feature of research conducted by the Institute for American Church Growth. Congregational homogeneity of one sort or another was found to be the case in mainline Protestant denominational life, almost without exception. Even those congregations which appear to be racially diversified usually display a unifying core of ethnic background, middle-class values or theological viewpoint. Although if Institute for American Church Growth did not invent the concept of the homogeneous unit, it has been the first to “baptize” the principle as a basis for more effective propagation of the gospel.

Church growth principles can also be used identify communities in which membership growth will be difficult if not impossible. Based on the homogeneous-unit principle, church growth research can determine which communities are too diversified for effective membership potential. Such diversity is defined by Peter Wagner as “disease” from the perspective of homogeneity -- for example “ethnikitus” (cultural diversity) in changing urban communities, “old age” (loss of young residents) depopulated rural areas, and “lift” (socioeconomic mobility) in the affluent suburbs. Where such “pathology” exists, church growth specialists (and social scientists generally) do not anticipate growth in mainline church membership.

In one regard the principles of the church growth movement appear to be misleading as applied to mainline Protestant denominations. Peter Wagner typically begins with the commitment of the pastor and the congregation to the purposes of church growth (often stated in terms of the Great Commission, Matthew 28:19-20). This sense of overriding urgency has encouraged some congregations to sacrifice other tasks for the singular cause of institutional membership growth. However, in mainline Protestant groups, there is no significant relationship between membership commitment and growth, except in new and expanding suburbs. For mainline churches, membership increases occur without a concentrated, organized effort per se. Nor is growth primarily dependent on the commitment of the pastor alone. Growing congregations are characterized by four elements: strong worship, diversified programs, effective pastor and enthusiastic members. Although those four elements carry a different content in different communities and traditions, in general it can be said that growing congregations have a favorable location, generate a higher level of activity, and feel better about what they are doing than do congregations not experiencing expansion. In light of this research, single-minded concentration on membership growth appears counterproductive.

We might note in passing that the Southern Baptist Convention has been uniquely blessed with features that are an expression of both the Kelley thesis and the Wagner principles. From their church history these Baptists have inherited a separatist, sectarian theological tradition which makes them comfortable with Kelley’s marks of the church. At the same time they exist in a social context which provides a stable cultural base for sharing the gospel as advocated by church growth principles; in the south, church attendance is significantly higher than in other areas, and churches draw members from that segment of the population whose citizens have larger families and tend to remain in the communities of their birth. SBC faith and structure match the people they so effectively serve.

Increased Pressures

The mainline denominations which have suffered the greatest membership losses also share a common heritage. The Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Dutch and German Reformed, Lutherans, Congregationalists and English-speaking Methodists have all enjoyed prestigious positions in earlier cultures. For them, mainline theology historically has meant caring both for individuals and for the culture as a whole. They are the denominations which have provided the strength for the National Council of Churches. Such ecumenical councils are an expression of a common concern for what Martin Marty has called “public Protestantism,” because they include the social order and public welfare as appropriate dimensions of Christian ministry. These mainline denominations can be distinguished from more sectarian groups which are characterized by what Marty has called “private Protestantism,” with its emphasis on personal religion.

In recent years, declining membership has increased the pressures within mainline denominations to withdraw from the public arena, and to limit the activities of the ecumenical councils which make visible the social witness of the churches. The Kelley thesis appears to stress the priority of personal piety and doctrinal purity of the church. This form of theological sectarianism has been used to justify the withdrawal of church support from the social ministries of public Protestantism. In a similar way, the homogeneous-unit principle of the church growth movement has emphasized a cultural sectarianism. This principle has been used to justify increased racial and economic segregation, as evidenced in denominational priorities for new-church development in ethnic enclaves and monochromatic suburban communities. Social involvement and congregational diversity have been identified by church leaders as major causes of declining church membership, and theological and cultural sectarianism have been offered as viable alternatives for renewal. In short, public Protestantism has taken the rap for membership decline.

In the face of this rhetoric, the recent studies of membership patterns offer four areas of insight into the behavior of mainline church members. First, “conservatism” in mainline denominations is apparently different from the “private Protestantism” of sectarian churches. Conservatives generally emphasize biblical truth, saving experience and personal faith. In mainline churches they also are concerned to save the traditions and places of their inheritance. These conservatives care about the people whom they have left behind in changing cities and declining rural areas -- but mainline churches have paid the price for such caring. They suffer from the “pathologies” of urban “ethnikitus,” rural “old age” and too much suburban “lift.” The growth statistics of mainline denominations would improve if they would move away from the past and instead place a singular priority on the future. However, the policy of abandoning congregations simply because they are “unproductive” has been considered theologically untenable and pastorally unthinkable. In this case the church leaders are too “conservative.”

Second, “conservatism” in mainline churches also includes a pastoral concern for the whole community. Growing mainline congregations are significantly more involved in community activities, and community groups are significantly more likely to be using church facilities. Further, the members of growing mainline churches indicate that they derive more satisfaction from churches which include a strong social ministry. Such congregations are distinctively Christian, but they are not withdrawn from the life of the community. Sectarian approaches which place priorities on the separation of the church, or on church membership growth per se, are not statistically significant in the growth of main-line churches. For example, the sectarian patterns which may be effective overseas or with the Jehovah’s Witnesses are apparently inappropriate when transplanted into the denominational programs of the United Church of Christ.

Failure to Attract Young People

Third, mainline Protestant churches are not losing members to the “competitive appeal” of conservative, evangelical or more rigorous religious groups. There is no membership migration from what Kelley has called the “weaker” to the “stronger” churches. Episcopalians and Presbyterians are not becoming Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists. The losses of mainline churches and the gains of other religious groups are two distinctively different phenomena which are occurring at the same time. These shifts involve different segments of the population, and reflect independent value changes among different groups of people. In a literal sense, the source of membership decline is not in the number of people who have dropped out of churches, but in the decreasing number of people who have joined. These churches have simply failed to attract new, younger members to take the place of those who have departed by natural attrition. The declining mainline churches have failed to maintain the family cycle.

Fourth, the youth from the families of mainline Protestant churches are not abandoning the faith. In fact, the theological beliefs of the American public seem to have remained relatively unchanged since the beginning of the Eisenhower era. Neither have young people shifted their loyalties from those of “old liberals” to those of the “new evangelicals” (on balance the flow seems slightly in the other direction). Rather, mainline church membership losses reflect a widespread shift in values which is especially pronounced among more educated, mobile young adult -- the children of mainline church families. Included in this values shift is a massive resistance to organizations, institutions and voluntary associations, including (but not limited to) the church. Thus, these “lost members” are not flocking to banners held out by other forms of institutionalized religion. They are mobile, experimental and experiential -- the free spirits in our society. They are people who believe without belonging.

Examining Roots

Mainline churches will not “win back” lost members by imitating the successful programs by which other groups secure the loyalties of other populations. Our problems are more complex and challenging. We cannot discover our ministry by mimicking the styles of others; we must look again at the roots of our confessional commitments.

When we lift our heads high enough to see beyond the embarrassing statistics of the present situation, we may discover that we have numerous biblical and historical models for creative Christian minorities in an essentially secular world, We can admit our minority status without assuming a sectarian posture. We can discover from current research many of the factors which contributed to the decline in mainline church membership. We can learn that church leadership and programs were not the precipitating causes: we are simply not that important when compared to much larger cultural forces. We can learn much about the people who would once have joined mainline churches -- where they are, what they believe, and how they can be reached. Finally, we can give up the myth of a righteous monopoly -- the idea that all religious people will join churches, and that churches should be interested only in religion. In short, we can regain our modesty.

Mainline Protestant churches appear to be uniquely prepared to work with those who believe without belonging. With them we apparently share many values of the past as well as hopes for the future. We may not get them “back” into the churches, but we can join with them to do the Lord’s work on earth. And we may rediscover the Christian church in the process.

The Future We Shan’t See: Evelyn Underhill”s Pacificism

Although most libraries have copies of some of her books -- the two celebrated ones are Mysticism and Worship -- Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) is but a name to many people, even among the theologically informed. Imagine my consternation a few years ago when, my dissertation on her concept of worship just completed, I talked with an Episcopal bishop who insisted that Evelyn Underhill, a fellow Anglican, was a man! He only tentatively accepted my explanation that in nonliterary circles she was known as Mrs. Hubert Stuart Moore, the wife of a London barrister. I myself had never heard of her until my seminary years. Yet she is definitely a “star” in her own right.

I

How Underhill’s life was shaped by World War I may be inferred from certain facts. The outbreak of the war on August 4, 1914, found her aboard her father’s yacht, which was then detained without lights in the harbor. There were to be further anxieties. The house adjacent to her parents’ residence in London was bombed, and a section of the law courts where her father’s chambers were housed was reduced to rubble. Moreover, since she had toured the continent frequently during the 15 years before war broke out, the knowledge that familiar haunts both at home and abroad were being devastated must have weighed on her mind.

Hubert Stuart Moore aided the war effort as a civilian, serving on hospital boards; he invented a splint and, according to one account, artificial limbs as well. His wife translated African guidebooks for Naval Intelligence. Perhaps to provide a little comic relief for herself and her colleagues there, she invented a country -- complete with flora and fauna. Her levity was halted just short of publication! It is conjectured that she also worked with the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association.

True, Underhill had her husband with her throughout the war. Nevertheless, the fact that two cousins were among the casualties probably deeply affected this sensitive woman who had neither children nor siblings.

Underhill, sobered by the hostilities, revealed her melancholy in a slender volume of poetry titled Theophanies: A Book of Verses (J. M. Dent, 1916). In “The Naval Reserve” she mused.

Strive for England, side by side,

Those who live and those who died.

Written in a similar vein is “England and the Soldier”:

Your wounds are England’s wounds,

Your labor and gain are hers,

With you I thrust forth to battle,

With you are my frontiers found.

I am there in the horror and pain, the

effort, the splendour, the joy;

And, falling in the fight, England receives her child.

 

“Candlemas, 1915,” seems nostalgic:

Dare we, in such a day,

   .   .   .   .   .   .

Carry the torch of faith upon its way,

fulfil this ancient rite?

 

Her official biographer, Margaret Cropper, sensed that Underhill was “easing her heart” as she cried out in “Non-Combatants” on behalf of all. Englishwomen and others not at the front:

 

Never of us be it said

We had no war to wage,

Because our womanhood,

Because the weight of age.

Held us in servitude.

      .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Naught were we spared -- of us, this word

      shall not be said.

II

It was not enough just to be sentimental, however; probably Underhill’s most significant rationale for warfare was her article “Problems of Conflict” in the Hibbert Journal for April 1955. Those who shudder at inscriptions on monuments or passages in history books which refer simply to “the Great War” or “the World War” -- written as though what we call World War I would indeed prove to be “the war to end war” -- will feel saddened to read her portentous observation that “we have no guarantee that it will not recur.”

Far from being a warmonger, however, Underhill tried to shun the extremes of either pacifism or militarism After declaring that the former had collapsed and the latter lacked integrity, she concluded that strife was nonetheless an integral part of the nature of things, as normal as the hunger for food or sex. Attempting a reductio ad absurdum, she announced that the pacifist position would decimate the race and its achievements.

Then the article turns to theology, with the argument that warfare resembles other social ills (e.g., “suffering, poverty, and disease”) which have released forces both good and evil. Perceptively. Underhill wrote: “Christian theologians hold that the death of Christ was both inevitable and salutary for the race; but they do not on that account excuse Judas Iscariot.” She feared that “the beautiful dreams of pacifism will no more eliminate armed conflict . . . than the dreams of Christian Science will eliminate sickness.” For her there was further justification in the fact that, while civilization has retained carnivorous practices, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was still widely held:

To Christians, even to theists, the particular form or moment in which death comes . . . surely cannot matter very much; except in so far as it gives . . . an opportunity to “die well.”

She concluded the article by depicting war as a positive good, “opening up to us new fields of endeavour and new opportunities of service and love.”

We can understand Christopher J. R. Armstrong’s comment that Underhill’s arguments in the Hibbert Journal really tend “to leave one justifying more than one had originally bargained for.” Perhaps realizing this herself, when later she abandoned her old position, she did so very quietly.

One final note here: in her tribute to the fallen hero and celebrated French poet Charles Péguy, Underhill observed (in The Essentials of Mysticism and Other Essays [J. M. Dent, 1920]) that he had become a soldier because he felt his country “had lost its hold upon realities.” Comparing him with the visionary Joan of Arc, she maintained that

side by side with Péguy’s spiritual gospel, or rather entwined with it, goes his practical and patriotic gospel. Since for him the whole of life was crammed with spiritual significance, he saw in the patriotic passion a sacrament of heavenly love, and in earthly cities symbols of the City of God.

III

Unfortunately, there is a lacuna in our story; we do not know how and why Underhill became a pacifist. One regrets that she did not disclose the dynamics of her change. Probably no single crisis moved her to renounce war; more likely she arrived at this decision as a result of her pilgrimage of faith, having mellowed and matured in her Christian experience. As she began to articulate a different philosophy, she did so with the same mystical temperament with which she had once condoned warfare,

We are the poorer because Underhill did not express her pacifist feelings in verse, but the strength of her viewpoint is Unmistakable in her prose. Her correspondence of this, period (available in The Letters of Evelyn Underhill [Religious Book Club, 19451) reflects a firm commitment to the way of peace.

Two issues loom large in these letters. One is the cross as the answer to evil. In The Life of Evelyn Underhill (Longmans, 1958) Cropper noted that Underhill’s pacifism was “linked to her deepest creed, and her interpretation of the meaning of the Cross.” Writing in 1941, only a month before her death; she proclaimed: “Christianity and war are incompatible, and  . . . nothing worth having can be achieved by ‘casting out Satan by Satan.’” Never theatrical herself, she urged that people of her persuasion not be “controversial, or go in for propaganda.” In that letter she characterized Hitler as a ‘scourge of God,” who could be countered by two means:

war or the cross -- “And only a very small number are ready for the Cross, in the full sense of loving and unresisting abandonment to the worst that may come.”

The other issue was Underhill’s concern over how few people held to the tenets of pacifism tenaciously. Toward the close of 1939 she lamented that “most of my quasi-pacifist friends are becoming more warlike,” Grieved to see the Anglican bishops on the side of war-fare, she was somewhat consoled that numbers of clergy did oppose the hostilities. The following year she affirmed:

I am still entirely pacifist and more and more convinced that the idea that this or any other war is “righteous” or will achieve any creative result of a durable kind, is an illusion.

A wistful letter of New Year’s Day, 1941, again noted that many pacifists had reneged, owing to the exigencies of the conflict, but would return to the fold after the war. Underhill personally remained unable to justify committing sin to cure sin.” She was not, of course, an ostrich with head in the sand, recognizing indeed (in a letter written in May 1940) that conditions in Norway, Belgium and Holland were enough to tempt one to forsake pacifism. But a month later she lamented: ‘The News Bulletins with their glorification of bombing are enough to destroy the moral integrity of any society.” Perhaps discerning her own impending death, this undaunted woman had added in the May letter: ‘There is nothing pacifists can do but take their share of the agony and pray for the future we shan’t live to see”’

IV

Underhill expressed her convictions in more detail in two pamphlets, The Church and War and Meditation of Peace. Some excerpts are included in the Cropper biography. In one, written for the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship, of which she was a member, she declared:

If she remains true to her supernatural call, the Church cannot acquiesce in War for War, however camouflaged or excused, must always mean the effort of a group of men to achieve their purpose. . . by inflicting destruction and death on another group of men.

She did admit, however, that “it is often difficult to define the boundary which divides legitimate police action from military action; nevertheless, Christians must try to find that boundary and to observe it.”

The second pamphlet was written for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, another organization to which Underhill belonged. She stated: “The true pacifist is a redeemer, and must accept with joy the redeemer’s lot. He, too, is self-offered, without conditions, for the peace of the world.”

Not content to be merely a proclaimer of pacifism, Underhill tried to live by its principles. In The Spiritual Life (Harper, n.d.) she pleaded: “We cannot begin the day by a real act of communion with the Author of peace and Lover of concord, and then go on to read a bloodthirsty newspaper at breakfast.” She declared in The Life of the Spirit and the Life of Today (E. P. Dutton, 1923) that society would be enhanced “if the civil wars of civilized man could cease and be replaced by that other mental fight, for the upbuilding of Jerusalem.” Not given to rancor, she implored divine mercy for both friend and foe, praying (in The Fruits of the Spirit [Lougmans, 1956]) “not only for the innocent people of Germany, but also for those who have brought this evil and misery on the world.” Her intercessions included “all children, in whom the hope of the future rests.”

The last years of Evelyn Underhill’s spiritual pilgrimage thus found her, a pacifist, although she never worked her ideas into a finely spun philosophy. Quite predictably, her stand has seldom won plaudits. Even Charles Williams, who edited her letters, had reservations, hinting that she was reverting to her slight tendency to dictate church dogma. One who shares her pacifist views, on the other hand, will regret her earlier stand in favor of war. Armstrong has conjectured that during World War I her views must have resounded, and her name been favorably mentioned, in “bellicose pulpit oratory.”

Patriotic even during her pacifist years, no doubt Underhill, had she lived, would have appreciated the window in Westminster Abbey commemorating the Battle of Britain or War Memorial Chapel in Washington Cathedral. One of her letters of 1940 is somewhat reminiscent of her tribute to Péguy: “Yet even war, it seems, isn’t spiritually sterile.

. . . Were you not thrilled by all the accounts of the patient endurance and unselfishness at Dunkirk?”

Underhill’s vision of peace was ahead of its time. It is still not widely accepted. Yet it contains a power dynamism. Like Harry Emerson Fosdick in the United States -- himself an advocate of World War I but a pacifist during World War II -- she shows that mature people can reverse earlier positions and remain models of responsible citizenship and ethical sensitivity. Men and women whose hearts are set on a new social order will always embrace the prophetic hope that “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”

Playing at Life: Robert Coover and His Fiction

The Public Burning, Robert Coover’s most recent book (Viking, 1977), has proved to be one of the most controversial novels of the decade. Like his earlier fiction, the book mounts a frontal attack on the ways people order their existence in the hope of giving it meaning. In his award-winning novel The Origin of the Brunists (Ballantine, 1966), Coover satirized religious institutions. In The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (Signet, 1968), he mercilessly caricatured Christian theology. In his latest volume Coover debunks America’s patriotic fervor and its quasi-religious sense of destiny.

No Larger Patterns

To accomplish this exposé, the novelist uses, in highly fictionalized form, the very real executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted on charges of espionage in the early 1950s. The story is related by Richard Nixon himself -- a figure who, in Coover’s portrayal, has totally accepted the American Myth and sought unflinchingly to become its personification as president, representative of the American Way of Life and symbol of the national psyche.

Though Coover painstakingly researched his subjects, he has compounded the impact of his borrowings from history with fantastic excursions: the executions at Sing Sing Prison, for example, are transposed to Times Square; Richard Nixon is fancifully shown trying to win favor with Uncle Sam by extracting a last-minute confession from Ethel Rosenberg, only to make love to her instead; Nixon’s fictionalized reward is his sodomization by Uncle Sam.

The book is intended to outrage, and it does. Newsweek’s reviewer called it “genuinely shocking: grossly funny, relentless in its determination to go too far.” It is particularly the lack of distinction between political history and fantasy that has made some readers uneasy. Time magazine (Coover terms that institution the “National Poet Laureate”) wrote: “His portrait [of Nixon] . . . is remarkably comprehensive and even moving. If only the character were not named Nixon, all would be well.” Norman Podhoretz, commenting in Saturday Review, issued a scathing analysis, calling the book a “cowardly lie.”

Certainly Coover’s particular blend of fact and fiction has caused political conservatives to recoil in distaste from the novelist’s authorial license. However, liberals as well as conservatives will miss the full force of Coover’s book if they see it merely as heavy-handed political satire. For in The Public Burning, Robert Coover is giving serious voice to his view of humankind. Denying human history any overarching sense of meaning, he has his Richard Nixon tell Ethel Rosenberg:

We’ve both been victims of the same lie, Ethel! There is no purpose, there are no causes, all that’s just stuff we make up to hold the goddamn world together  -- all we’ve really got is what we have right here and now: being alive! [p. 436].

For Coover, there are no larger patterns to life, no underlying meanings to be extracted. The American Myth is a sham which people adopt in their need to give life meaning. Patriotic zeal arises from our natural desire for order, from our longing to categorize what is good and bad, right and wrong. But though patriotism is one of several tools humanity utilizes to make sense of its world (religion and theology are others), it has, in Coover’s view, no existence apart from creative human imagination.

For Coover believes that we live in an essentially random universe and that whatever order may be derived says more about the creative and imaginative faculties of men and women than about the world itself. Point a man toward the heavens and the serendipitous array of stars and he will see a Big Dipper, a bear, a ram and a pair of fish. Show him some accidental inkblots, and he will conjure up all manner of images. Humanity is compulsively driven toward creating pattern and meaning, the novelist suggests, because it fears more than anything else the alternative.

Keeping Confusion at Bay

The alternative to this fictitious ordering of life is made concrete in The Public Burning through the character of the Phantom, that “mysterious fearsome force,” to quote Uncle Sam, “which from time immemorious has menaced the peace and security of mankind and buggered the hopes of the holy” (p.335).

At a superficial level, the Phantom is the embodiment of everything (e.g., communism, atheism) that disturbs one’s ordered world by introducing a “different” interpretive principle. At a deeper, existential level, however, it is the suppressed recognition that chaos and entropy -- which mock all ordered systems -- are the true foundations of the world. Given the Phantom’s reality, people will go to any length to defend their creations (in the case of The Public Burning, their patriotic zeal, given focus in the character of Uncle Sam).

Despite his belief that we live in an ultimately random universe, Coover paradoxically asserts that what one does to order one’s world is nonetheless important. It is not the “truthfulness” of a particular world view that interests him, but the ability of people through their imaginative powers to create meaning out of the chaos they find. Thus he is fascinated by the conflicting visions of Nixon and the Rosenbergs. Humanity needs orderliness, Coover is saying, and all the accouterments (i.e., myth, ritual, history, legend, language) that go into its making. Through our creative and imaginative powers, we are able to fulfill this need, making rules about how we will perceive the world and interpret our experience, thereby keeping the forces of confusion at bay. In this achievement is humankind’s glory.

The human being is, in Coover’s eyes, a sort of player, and life is but a game. People respond differently to such sport, but all participate in it. Some become so wrapped up in their imaginative creations that they are no longer able to experience the world as it is. Within Coover’s fiction, Ethel Rosenberg is such an individual. Others, like Coover’s Nixon, come to a partial recognition of themselves as the game-players they are and understand the kind of artifice they are engaged in. Such self-aware participants are Coover’s ideal. It is they who can creatively and joyfully order their world without becoming ensnared by their imposed system.

Rather than focusing attention on some pattern of meaning out there (e.g., the American Myth or, in Coover’s other novels, Christian theology and organized religion), the skillful player will center on the ability to create order (any order) out of chaos. For Coover, the particular game one plays is less important than the fact that one is playing. To recognize one’s involvement allows for the shaping of a more fulfilled life, as well as for an occasional burst of laughter. And that, says Coover, is the most mature human response possible in a random universe.

Playing at Religion

The theme of humans as game-players underlies Coover’s two other major fictional works as well. In both The Origin of the Brunists and The Universal Baseball Association, the novelist similarly satirizes the human propensity for creating meaning. The former work focuses on religious rather than political institutions; the latter is a highly inventive recasting of Christian theology. Both seek to expose the lack of meaning at the center of the cosmos, even while they explore ways by which men and women can continue to live. The major difference in the books, perhaps, is the perspectives on game-playing which their central characters adopt.

In The Origin of the Brunists, Justin “Tiger” Miller, a newspaperman who joins a doomsday cult in order to research a sensational story, knows that the new religious sect is without real substance. He realizes that the songs, rituals and legends that give the adherents’ world a sense of purpose are bogus. Although the faithful are fooled by such patterns, Miller is not. He remains as cynical in his view of these pious folk as he does of the Reverend Edwards and his “common sense,” enculturated, modern form of Christianity. Whether one conjures up phantoms and bogeymen and things that go bump in the night (as the Brunists do), or commits oneself to the empty forms of an institutionalized religion informed by a positivistic culture (as the Reverend Edwards does), Miller understands that to become so involved in the game of religion that one no longer recognizes the world for “the mad scatter it [is]” (p. 160) is to be lost. The insistence that the end of the world is imminent and the belief that a disembodied Christianity is vital are equally misguided notions. In both cases the “game” has be. come so important that the players forego their one real possession -- an awareness of the dynamic present.

Miller counters such foolhardiness by playing at religion without the risk of commitment.

Games are what kept Miller going. Games, and the pacifying of mind and organs. Miller perceived existence as a loose concatenation of separate and ultimately inconsequential instants, each colored by the actions that preceded it, but each possessed of a small wanton freedom of its own. Life, then, was a series of adjustments to these actions and, if one kept his sense of humor and produced as many of these actions himself as possible, adjustment was easier [p. 161].

As the novel ends, Miller, recovering from a nearly fatal, orgiastic encounter with the Brunists, is ministered to by a nurse named Happy Bottom -- a fellow skeptic and sometime bedmate. Realizing his affection for her, Miller asks Happy Bottom why she has continued to remain open and loving to him:

He expected her to make some crack, but instead she only smiled and said, “I don’t know. I guess because I like tile way you laugh.” Yes, there was that. Not the void within and ahead, but the immediate living space between two [p. 506].

Laughing in the presence of the immediate spaces life provides -- such is Coover’s vision of the human.

Playing at Theology

In The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh (who is Yahweh -- JHWH -- recast) fails to perceive life’s comic randomness. Henry, a middle-aged accountant, escapes his humdrum work life by setting up an imaginary baseball league in his kitchen. The driving force behind his league is the random roll of three dice which, together with some charts, approximates the actual occurrences of a baseball game. Henry becomes unable to distance himself from his imagined sports world and loses his job (and perhaps his mind). There are several key moments in his downfall. The roll of the dice having produced a perfect game, he is threatened by the stasis of perfection. Moreover, when the throw of the dice dictates that his perfect-game pitcher (Damon Rutherford) be killed by a “bean ball,” Henry loses what equilibrium he has. Intervening in the game’s randomness, he seeks to re-establish some balance by rigging the dice so that they kill the responsible pitcher (Jock Casey). But such meddling with the mindless and unpredictable dice fails to bring peace. Although Jock Casey has become a Christlike sacrificial lamb, upon which all the evil of J. Henry Waugh’s (Yahweh’s) creation is deposited, and although Henry subsequently fashions a written account of the first 56 seasons of the Universal Baseball Association (UBA) by one of the imagined ballplayers, order remains absent.

Henry disappears in the final chapter of Coover’s narrative as later generations of UBA ballplayers theologize on the origins of the league and its creator. Readers overhear the players commenting: “I don’t know if there’s really a record-keeper up there or not, Paunch. But even if there weren’t, I think we’d have to play the game as though there were”; and “I’m afraid, Gringo, I must agree, with our distinguished folklorist and foremost witness to the ontological revelations of the patterns of history . . . and [I] have come to the conclusion that God exists and he is a nut” (pp. 167.68).

J. Henry Waugh is indeed a “nut,” for he loses himself in his own ordered universe, a baseball association complete with statistics, history and probabilities. Even Henry’s sex life can be stimulated only when he imagines himself to be his star pitcher, Damon Rutherford. The imaginary ball games become all-important, for they alone provide the data whereby pattern and order can be observed. There is a fine line, says Coover, that humankind must walk in moving through that uncharted surd we call history. Our imagination gives life a necessary “plot,” an order in an otherwise all-too-often nightmarish situation. But if we forget, as Henry does, that such “plots” are just that -- story lines we impose on our random present -- our play, our “fiction,” proves inhibiting if not destructive. Our imaginative efforts blind us to the dynamic present and impede our laughter.

For Coover, our fictions -- whether they be expressed in theologizing, churchgoing or patriotism -- can be either enervating or energizing. If we participate in such “games” not to discover some ultimate meaning, but because we love to play, we will be provided with laughter and joy. If we invest our play-worlds with the need for truth and/or ultimacy, we risk chaos (the Brunists), madness (J. Henry Waugh) and death (the Rosenbergs).

At the novel’s close we hear the self-searching doubts of one of the players of the Universal Baseball Association, catcher Paul Trench (are we to think of Paul Tillich?). He is not sure why he continues to play until his pitcher says: “Hey, wait, buddy! You love this game, don’t you?” And that is enough. Paul Trench has no adequate theology -- he doesn’t know whether he is a Caseyite or a Damonite -- but that is irrelevant.

. . . it doesn’t even matter that he’s going to die, all that counts is that he is here and here’s The Man and here’s the boys and there’s the crowd, the sun, the noise.

“It’s not a trial,” says Damon. . . . “It’s not even a lesson. It’s just what it is.” Damon holds the baseball up between them. It is hard and white and alive in the sun.

He laughs. It’s beautiful, that ball. He punches Damon lightly in the ribs with his mitt. “Hang loose,” he says, and pulling down his mask, trots back behind home plate [p. 174].

To Be a Game-Player

According to Coover, we play the game of life because we love it, and that is enough. We create myths and legends, we pledge allegiance to church and state, because of our propensity for order and meaning. That such arrangements are of our own invention matters not, for the laughter generated by such pleasures remains. Humans are “game-players” who by means of their imagination make rules, set boundaries, and occasionally give a pep talk or two.

To be a self-conscious game-player, as Coover portrays that role, is to recognize what Albert Camus has called the “absurd” -- the disrelation between an individual who demands meaning, justice and unity in the world, and a universe that responds to human demands with mute silence. Coover should not be grouped with existentialists like Camus, however, for whereas Camus seeks to challenge the absurd through action and thereby affirm self in the face of the tragic human condition, Coover is more inclined just to accept life’s condition, to play the game for what it is.

If Coover is to be categorized philosophically (and this is perhaps appropriate given his former employment as a professor of philosophy), he would better fit in the positivistic tradition that views as nonsensical whatever is incapable of verification. Coover complicates even this assessment, however, by finding religious and patriotic assertions that lack an empirical “truth-content” to be of significance nonetheless. Such language objectifies our gossamer existence; religion and politics, though the products of our imagination, are paradoxically what make our experiences “real.”

Viewed theologically, Coover’s comic vision is perplexing, however engagingly presented. For if life is but “vanity,” as the writer of Ecclesiastes suggests, can one truly find pleasure in it by imposing upon it a meaning through an act of imagination and will? Moreover, can such an effort allow one truly to rest in the dynamic present, experiencing most fully the joys life has to offer? J. Henry Waugh found that effort difficult, as did “Richard Nixon.” It is significant that even Coover’s fictional exemplars, “Tiger” Miller and Paul Trench, come to their full realization of life’s “joys” only as their stories end. Coover does not provide insights into how a protracted life of game-playing might prove workable.

For the writer of Ecclesiastes, the stark reality of death, the amorality of life and the uncertainty of circumstance threaten existence. In this regard, Coover is like this Old Testament wisdom writer. Moreover, there are similarities in the common call they sound for life to be accepted as it presents itself. But whereas Coover believes that we can enjoy the opportunities of our dynamic present if we but realize the ultimate “vanity” of all of life, the writer of Ecclesiastes finds the human being able to be at peace only with the realization that life is a gift given by God. Although eternity remains unknowable and ultimate meaning impossible, one can enjoy oneself in eating and drinking and toiling  -- for life is God’s gift (cf. Eccles. 3:1-14).

Coover’s vision of the human being as game-player seems finally ephemeral and without adequate foundation. But his writing is nonetheless important. For he is one of a group of young American novelists who, writing from a post-Christian stance, challenge the church to rethink its faith. Coover’s theological importance resides in the kinds of questions his fiction raises -- questions that deal with the nature of humanity, examine our secular and religious institutions, and spotlight the omnipresence of myth and ritual in our lives. The whole thrust of his work appears to revolve around the question: Is there order in the universe beyond my experience, and if not, what is it that gives me the impression of orderliness? In working his way toward a resolution of this problem, he whittles away at the stereotyped ways in which we all too often experience the world, superficially identifying ourselves with secular and religious institutions, using memories, legends and songs to order our experiences.

In one of his shorter works, Coover writes:

The novelist uses familiar mythic or historical forms to combat the content of those forms and to conduct the reader (lector amantisimo!) to the real, away from mystification to clarification, away from magic to maturity, away from mystery to revelation [Pricksongs and Descants (New American Library, 1970), p. 791.

Such is Robert Coover’s agenda. Though he does not succeed entirely, his questions challenge readers to clarify their own commitments, to seek a maturity in their own understanding of the human, and to explicate that revelation which is available to humankind.

 

Feminist Theology in a Global Perspective

The women’s movement and feminist theology have frequently been castigated for their preoccupation with the concerns of white; middleclass North American women. In some cases, the criticism is voiced by adamant opponents who seek to discredit feminist efforts; in other cases, it comes from those sympathetic to women’s rights. Both kinds of critics argue that in comparison with the scandal of world hunger, with human rights violations and the plight of political prisoners, with oppressive regimes of the right or left, the real or imagined oppression of white, middle-class American women seems a secondary, even trivial, concern. What response is possible to such criticism?

A Middle-Class Movement

First, one must concede that the charge has some validity. It is a commonplace among scholars of the Women’s movement that the 19th century struggle for women’s rights in America had lost much of its radical thrust by the end of the century as the vote became the single overriding issue, and that supporters of women’s suffrage were not above an appeal to blatant racism and class-consciousness to advance their cause. Similarly, though many would cite, Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique as having triggered the current women’s movement, its primary concern was for the white, middle-class American housewife. It did not speak to the poor or nonwhite woman whose idea of liberation might well include freedom from the economic necessity of working at a deadening, low-paying job and the privilege of staying home to raise her children.

Still, one should note that this is only one side of the picture. American feminism of the 19th century was born of the abolitionist movement, and of equal significance with Friedan’s book as impetus for the current women’s movement was the experience of women in the civil rights and antiwar protests of the ‘60s. Those women rebelled against being relegated to secondary roles as coffee-makers or typists while men “ran the revolution.” They realized the inconsistency of working for the rights and full humanity of another group when they themselves were denied these.

There is indeed some truth to the charge that the women’s movement is a middle-class phenomenon, but it is a charge most validly stated from within the movement, not by outsiders wishing to discredit it. Moreover, such criticism has been made by those involved, and it has been taken with increasing seriousness as the movement has attained greater maturity and impact: witness the large representation of poor and minority women at the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston.

To raise such questions can, however, be a way of avoiding uncomfortable issues as well as changes which might disrupt one’s life “close to home.” It is possible for many white, middle-class Americans to distance themselves from other liberation movements. They can feel sincere but detached sympathy, can send money for world hunger projects, write to governments about human rights violations, boycott multinational corporations which exploit Third World people all without necessarily experiencing disruption in their own lives. It is harder to distance oneself from the impact of the women’s movement, for women are a part of all races and classes. Dismissing feminism as a white, middle-class movement may therefore be a means of avoiding personal commitment, or a way of trivializing the issues.

Evading the Issue

Robert McAfee Brown, in an introduction to Theology in the Americas (edited by Sergio Torres and John Eagleson [Orbis, 1976]), suggests four ways in which the challenges of Latin American liberation theology can be evaded. These evasions are equally applicable to feminist theology. First, Brown writes; “a threatening position can sometimes be disposed of simply by calling it a ‘fad’ and, those who espouse it ‘naïve.’” This is not to exempt liberation theology from critical analysis but to suggest that dismissing it without a serious hearing is irresponsible, a “cheap shot.” Oppression, whether based on race, class or sex; is not a fad, and problems are not going to go away simply because they are ignored.

Second, Brown suggests that “a threatening position can sometimes be disposed of by co-opting it.” In other words, one can insist that all persons need liberation and thereby blunt the concrete issues raised by particular liberation theologies. It is true, of course, that the ultimate aim is human liberation, not merely women’s liberation; men are trapped in dehumanizing expectations and stereotypes and are diminished by the roles they fill. But the validity of that insight must not allow one to move away too quickly from specific feminist insights and issues.

The third means of evading a threatening position which Brown cites is “keeping it at a safe distance.” Again, the evasion is readily applicable to feminist theology: “I can accept women as equals and co-workers in the public world, as long as my wife remains a traditional homemaker; I’ll support the ERA, but I won’t have to change my own life style; it’s all right for women to become ministers, but my congregation will never call one as pastor; it’s OK for a few women to come into our system, as long as their presence requires no major structural changes.”

Finally, Brown writes, “a threatening position can sometimes be disposed of by describing it in emotionally discrediting terms.” In the case of Latin American liberation theology, the common “scare” term is “Marxist”; for feminist theology, a series of images frightening to many people is evoked by the use of such terms as “lesbian,” “unisex” and “antifamily.” The point is not whether such labels may apply to some proponents of the position but whether the issues and analyses they raise are significant and accurate.

A Double Oppression

Thus when criticizing feminism as a white, middle-class movement, one must keep the limitations of that critique carefully in mind and analyze one’s own motives in voicing it: Am I trying to protect my own world from disruption or to trivialize the movement’s ideas to avoid facing the threat? But given such qualifications, I would argue that feminism can and must move to a broader, global perspective, in general and in its self-consciously religious manifestations.

And indeed, this development is already taking place. Feminist theologians are coming more and more to recognize the double oppression of minority and Third World women. Other liberation theologies have, with few exceptions, ignored the special problems and oppression of women. In part, this tendency has resulted from a situation in which racial or class oppression is so immediate and desperate that it overrides the less obvious oppression of women in particular. Thus if women’s special needs are acknowledged at all, they are delayed -- “put on the back burner” -- lest they jeopardize the primary cause.

The reaction is hardly a new one: abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier wrote to Sarah and Angelina Grimke, early American abolitionists and advocates of women’s rights, about their concern for women: “Is it not forgetting the great and dreadful wrongs of the slave in a selfish crusade against some paltry grievance of [your] own?” (quoted in Women and Religion: A Feminist Sourcebook of Christian Thought, edited by Elizabeth Clark and Herbert Richardson [Harper & Row, 1977], p. 207). Yet, on a practical level, women are understandably tired of being told to wait until more pressing needs are met; they are skeptical that the “later” moment may never arrive. As one author has written of the double oppression of Third World women:

The women from South Africa and Australia indicate strongly that racism is by far the most vicious oppression they have to deal with. . . . However, it does not follow that Third World women should ignore sexism. Just because being lynched is worse than being raped, doesn’t mean that if one is vulnerable to both, one should do nothing to try to stop rape [Crimes Against Women: Proceedings of the International Tribunal, edited by Diana E. H. Russell and Nicole Van de Ven (Millbrae, California: Les Femmes, 1976), p. 89].

And it is not true, even on a practical level, that the choice must be a stark either/or -- the needs of blacks or women, the  poor or women (especially since at least half of the blacks and the poor are women).

There is a certain arrogance in presuming to define from outside a situation who does or does not need or deserve liberation, whose suffering is less significant. A strong emphasis in current liberation theology is the imperative to let the oppressed speak for themselves and to define their own needs, and not have this done for them, however well-intentioned the outsiders. Moreover, if one accepts the premise of liberation theology -- that all persons are created in the imago dei and hence have the right to realize a full personhood unrestricted by unjust systems and structures -- it is inconsistent to maintain that one group, defined by gender, is not yet to be fully included in such personhood.

On one level, the problem is the lack of awareness of the double oppression of minority and Third World women. But it is possible to remedy that ignorance, if not with the depth of personal experience, then at least through communication such as the written word and the conference -- at which, incidentally, victims of double oppression may speak for themselves.

A Unique Vulnerability

But what is the content, the substance, of this double oppression? One might suggest two kinds of oppression affecting women in general but especially poor women. First, there is that directly connected with woman’s sexuality, her role in reproduction and the customs and mores arising therefrom. A particularly tragic example was the mass rape of women in Bangladesh during the 1971 war. Estimates range from 200,000 to 400,000 women raped and tortured, with the resulting tragedies of venereal disease, pregnancy and psychological trauma. But the crowning irony was the attitude of the husbands, male relatives and society toward these women. As Susan Brownmiller reports:

The Reverend Kentaro Buma [an official of the WCC] reported that more than 200,000 Bengali women had been raped by Pakistani soldiers during the nine-month conflict, a figure that had been supplied to him by Bangladesh authorities in Dacca. Thousands of the raped women had become pregnant, he said. And by tradition, no Moslem husband would take back a wife who had been touched by another man, even if she had been subdued by force. “The new authorities of Bangladesh are trying their best to break that tradition,” Buma informed the newsmen. “They tell the husbands the women were victims and must be considered national heroines. Some men have taken their spouses back home, but these are very, very few” [Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (Bantam, 1976), p. 80].

To the credit of the authorities, and in part because of the international sympathy aroused by an unusual amount of publicity, significant steps were taken to, ameliorate the plight of the victimized women; nevertheless, the incident clearly dramatizes not only the vulnerability of women to this particular form of violence but also the injustice of a culture, sanctioned by religion, which regards the woman’s sexual integrity as primarily the concern of husbands and male relatives whose honor is at stake: bluntly, she is property, not a full person in her own right. That attitude is an ancient and pervasive one, and it has much to do ideologically with the customs and laws surrounding not only rape but also marriage, divorce, inheritance, freedom of movement and access to education -- in all of which areas women suffer a disadvantage. Because the being of woman has traditionally been so closely identified with her biological role in reproduction, many aspects of feminist protest are linked to sexuality and marriage and the limitations which religious dogma and social custom have placed on women in these areas.

Political, Cultural, Economic Factors

A second general category of oppression, distinct from though not ultimately unrelated to women’s sexual role, is the political, cultural and economic oppression of women -- again, especially of poor women. Women are grossly underrepresented in political power structures in the United States and around the world, and even in the most “advanced” nations, the vote for women is a relatively recent achievement. Women are concentrated in low-paying and nonpaying jobs, and the concept of equal pay for equal work is again a recent development and far from universal.

The problems becomes clear and acute in the situation of rural women in the Third World. As the authors of Who Really Starves? note: “Although the industrialized world thinks of farming as men’s work, most of the world’s farmers are women.” Yet, ironically, “women as a group suffer most from inadequate food supplies” (Who Really Starves? Women and World Hunger, by Lisa Leghorn and Mary Roodkowsky [Friendship Press, 1977], pp. 23, 9). For various cultural and social reasons, women eat least and last, and thus are most likely to be malnourished. Men receive more food and food of higher nutritional quality, since they and their work are perceived as more valuable.

A second irony lies in the changes effected by the introduction of Western technology in Third World nations. The traditional division of labor was disrupted, as men were recruited for wage-paying export agriculture and other industries -- employment frequently requiring long absences from their home villages and families, yet without the compensation of substantially greater support for those families. Moreover, technological improvements in agriculture were applied to the cash crops raised by men for export, not to the food crops raised by women for their families, so that the problem of indigenous hunger was compounded. Here is double oppression at the most basic level.

Let me cite briefly two more examples: illiteracy rates and infant formula. Half the world’s women are illiterate and desperately in need of education for sheer survival, if not for economic improvement and personal fulfillment. Yet even where education is permitted, girls are often discouraged from taking advantage of the opportunities, both because of social custom and the immediate need for their labor at home. And so long as they cannot go to school, they are trapped in the social and economic conditions perpetuated by ignorance.

The effort to market infant formula in the Third World is another absurdity. Multinational corporations have advertised the advantages of commercial products, convincing poor women that they should shift from breast-feeding to bottle-feeding. The claims of these formulas’ superiority are medically dubious; moreover, many poor women have diluted the expensive product to stretch it, thus depriving their infants of adequate nutrition. Related problems include the lack of pure water, sterilization and refrigeration. The attempts to create a market and a need where none exist are a ludicrous example of the Madison Avenue mentality -- and one with tragic results.

Empowering the Women

The solution to Third World women’s double oppression is not, of course, more charity and paternalism; rather it lies in women’s empowerment. Poor nations, insisting on their human rights of autonomy and self-control, rightfully resent outside identification of their problems and “proper” solutions dictated by developed nations, however well intentioned. Similarly, if one agrees that it is morally wrong for rich nations to exercise paternalism in their relations with poor nations, surely the same is true for the relations of men and women.

It is not sufficient for men in the Third World to develop power and autonomy, while the women remain in their traditional state of dependence and powerlessness, subject to the control of husbands, fathers and a male power structure. Indeed, with technological modernization, the woman’s position may be less favorable than in a tribal culture. Systemic change which stops short of addressing sexism is, incomplete and embodies an ideological contradiction. Women must have the same rights of power and autonomy vis-á-vis men as poor nations rightly demand in their relations with developed nations.

Thus the contribution of women to liberation theology is essential. As the authors of Who Really Starves? conclude: “Growing numbers of women are working together to create new solutions to the old problems of poverty, famine and racial prejudice, adding not only their energies and skills but also different perspectives on these problems”. (Ibid., p. 36). It is imperative that the voices of poor women be listened to, and that conditions be created where such speech becomes possible.

An Agenda for Feminist Theology

In conclusion, what might be some of the contributions and directions of feminist theology in a global perspective? First of all, it can develop an awareness of the forms of oppression for all women and a particular concern for the disadvantaged. Such awareness will include a prophetic criticism of American feminism when it is too narrow in scope, when it demands that the power of determining and directing social goals and structures be shared with middle- and upper-class American women while other women and groups are still excluded from that realization. Such awareness will also recognize the diversity of human needs and the fact that liberation may mean different things to different people. To let the oppressed themselves define their freedom is crucial; yet one can also recognize the reality of cultural conditioning and lift up alternatives for those who never imagined that certain options even existed. Nor will such awareness have to deny the reality of the middle-class woman’s oppression, especially spiritually and psychologically, as a valid, inclusion in the spectrum of needs.

Second, feminist theology in a global perspective can recognize the interrelatedness of all liberation theologies. No one group has a monopoly on suffering, and there is no single paradigm or “worst” form of oppression. Thus if feminist theology’s message to feminists is that they must recognize other varieties of oppression beyond sexism, its call to other liberation theologies is for them to take seriously the oppression of women, and especially the double oppression of poor, minority and Third World women. For both practical and ideological reasons, their needs are not secondary ones which can safely be ignored until all other forms of oppression have been eliminated.

Finally, the feminist perspective can contribute an important critique of structures, symbols and patterns which continue to reinforce the secondary status of women. First, feminist theology questions the whole idea of a hierarchically structured reality, whether in the church or in a nation’s economy. Rejecting the necessity for domination, it asks the radical question: Must there “always be a “servant” class, a facilitating group to take the mundane cares from the shoulders of the “‘more important” group, and to be controlled by them? Whether the model be the world community, the church, the nation or the family, many feminist, theologians argue that cooperation/equality is a more Christian model than dominance/submission. Priests, husbands and rulers are not more worthy, more valuable or closer to the divine than are laypersons, wives and “common people.”

Despite the overwhelming precedents of history, is it not possible, feminists ask, to have human communities where all share in the more and less fulfilling tasks? Cannot particular positions be filled by gifts and inclination, rather than being dictated by a person’s birth as a man or woman, as a member of a particular race or class? Could one not envision a community where such different functions, freely chosen, were similarly valued and not the ingredients in a complex hierarchy of wealth and status? That scenario sounds rather visionary but perhaps no more so than Paul’s words on the members of the body of Christ (I Cor. 12, Rom. 12).

Contra Dualism

A second and related theme is the feminist critique of a dualism which elevates spirit, mind, soul and male as superior and denigrates matter, body, nature and female as inferior. Our dualistic heritage forms a. significant implicit or unconscious part of Western culture and religion. Thus many feminists are explicit champions of the goodness and value of nature and the body, especially as these have been culturally and historically associated with “the feminine.” Such criticism can indeed extend to the whole idea of a dualistically structured world view. What ontological or philosophical necessity exists that reality be dualistic rather than basically monistic, expressed in plurality? Might not apparent dualities be viewed as different emphases rather than as antagonisms?

Such are the questions and issues raised by feminist theology in a global perspective, proceeding from the conviction that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, and that all persons are created in the image of God and therefore have a right to develop their full potentials of personhood.

The Living of These Days: A Tribute to Harry Emerson Fosdick

May 24, 1978 marks the 100th anniversary of the birthday of Harry Emerson Fosdick, America’s greatest liberal preacher of the 20th century. For more than 40 years Fosdick was at the forefront of theological and social thinking and controversy as he brought to his country a prophetic voice of reasoned faith and enlightened hope.

I

Born in Buffalo, Fosdick received his formal education at Colgate University and Union Theological Seminary (New York), beginning as a virtual fundamentalist and ending as a vigorous advocate of reason and common sense in religious faith. As he later wrote:

What finally smashed the whole idea of Biblical inerrancy for me was a book by Andrew D. White, president of Cornell University, entitled History of The Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom. It was a ponderous two-volume work, but I devoured it. It seemed to me unanswerable. Here were the facts, shocking facts about the way the assumed infallibility of the Scriptures had impeded research, deepened and prolonged obscurantism, fed the mania of persecution, and held up the progress of mankind. I no longer believed the old stuff I had been taught. Moreover, I no longer merely doubted it. I rose in indignant revolt against it [The Living of These Days (Harper, 1956), p. 52].

Fosdick was ordained in the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York city in 1903 after an unsettling seminary career that included a period of service in the filth and poverty of the Bowery, which quickened his social conscience, and a nervous breakdown which made him, as it had made William James, sensitive to the dark side of human nature. The difficulty, he would later counsel, is not in the adversity but in the adversity’s effect. That same year, 1903 he married Florence Whitney and assumed his first full-time pastorate at First Baptist Church of Montclair, New Jersey. "Preaching for me," he once said, "has never been easy, and at the start it was often exceedingly painful." Early its his ministry he discarded expository and topical preaching as unsuitable and came to look upon preaching as "personal counseling on a group scale." He declared:

Every sermon should have for its main business the head-on constructive meeting of some problem which was puzzling minds, burdening consciences, distracting lives, and no sermon which so met a real human difficulty, with light to throw on it and help to win victory over it, could possibly be futile [ibid., p. 94].

Fosdick remained in Montclair until 1915, when he became Morris K. Jesup professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York (he had taught part-time there since 1908); for the next several years he taught scores of young men the Fosdickian method of preaching, focused on helping people solve their real problems -- personal, social and theological. He also began an extensive weekend itinerant ministry to college campuses across the country and thus widened his range of influence and liberal notoriety.

In the meantime, he had begun another important phase of his ministry -- writing. "I do not see how a man can preach without writing," he declared. "I always have thought with my pen in hand" He published more than 30 books in his career, perhaps the most significant, in addition to his collections of sermons, being the trilogy The Meaning of Prayer, The Meaning of Faith and The Meaning of Service; The Modern Use of the Bible; A Guide to Understanding the Bible; On Being a Real Person, and his autobiography, The Living of These Days.

II

In 1918 Fosdick became the preaching minister at a newly formed Presbyterian Church which had resulted from the merger of three Presbyterian churches in midtown New York. Thus began a period of six years during which Baptist Fosdick became embroiled in the modernist-fundamentalist controversy, which rocked all the major denominations but especially the Presbyterian Church. As the controversy began to emerge, Fosdick preached a sermon titled "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" It was, he thought, a plea for fair play and for a church tolerant enough to allow for a diversity of theological viewpoints. Unfortunately the sermon had an unintended effect, exposing instead Fosdick’s own liberal leanings. As he later admitted:

The trouble was, of course, that in stating the liberal and fundamentalist positions, I had stood in a Presbyterian pulpit and said frankly what the modernist position on some points was -- the virgin birth no longer accepted as historic fact, the literal inerrancy of the Scriptures incredible, the second coming of Christ from the skies an outmoded phrasing of hope [ibid., p. 148].

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, meeting in 1923 and to a large degree under the spell of arch-fundamentalist and dynamic orator William Jennings Bryan, adopted a resolution asking the Presbytery of New York to take such action "as will require the preaching and teaching in the First Presbyterian Church of New York City to conform to the system of doctrines taught in the Confession of Faith."

This resolution also specified some of the doctrines which Fosdick’s opponents believed were in the confession: biblical inerrancy, virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, physical resurrection and the second coming. Fosdick, of course, could not accept the mandate of this resolution, and though the First Presbyterian Church tried to work out a compromise so that they could keep him, the controversy became so raging and bitter -- one fundamentalist minister referred to him as "a religious outlaw" and as "the Jesse James of the theological world" -- that Fosdick resigned and preached his final sermon at First Presbyterian in March 1925. In that farewell sermon he said: "They call me a heretic. Well, I am a heretic if conventional orthodoxy is the standard. I should be ashamed to live in this generation and not be a heretic" (ibid., p. 176).

The best of Fosdick was yet to come. John D. Rockefeller of Park Avenue Baptist Church in New York approached him about the possibility of his becoming the minister of that church. Fosdick demurred on two grounds: that baptism by immersion was required for full church membership and that the church was located in a rich residential area where its influence on the greater social problems of the city would be minimal. The Park Avenue congregation voted to remove these two obstacles by forming the new Riverside Church at Morningside Heights, completed in 1931, the citadel of the best in American Protestantism and a lasting tribute to the high ideals of Harry Emerson Fosdick. The story of Riverside Church is a story in itself -- of preaching and counseling and service to the community, of a church interdenominational and interracial. Fosdick’s insistence that Riverside Church have neither any creed nor one mode of baptism made him an ecumenical pioneer. He himself wrote the dedicatory hymn:

God of grace and God of glory.

On thy people pour thy power;

Crown Thine ancient church’s story,

Bring her bud to glorious flower,

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

For the facing of this hour.

Fosdick remained at Riverside until his retirement in 1945; during that period of 20 years at Riverside he was a regular preacher on the National Radio Pulpit, through which his name became a household word. He remained active as a preacher and writer for many years after his retirement and died in 1969.

III

The task of summarizing the major contributions of this modern-day prophet is somewhat intimidating. Three aspects of his legacy stand our in my mind. First, he consistently attempted to express the abiding truths of the Christian faith in the changing categories appropriate to the modern world. He knew that no theology could be expressed in final form. As he put it,

If the day ever comes when men care so little for the basic Christian experiences and revelations of truth that they cease trying to rethink them in more adequate terms, see them in the light of freshly acquired knowledge, and interpret them anew for new days, then Christianity will be finished [ibid., p. 230].

For this reason Fosdick waged a lifelong battle against the fundamentalists and proponents of a static orthodoxy. On the other hand, he also opposed the radicals who threw out the abiding truths of the Christian faith. To quote him:

Unable to be a theological reactionary, I could not be a theological radical either. The radicals always seemed to me to have decided that the stars had vanished because an old astronomy had gone. My own reaction has been the opposite: the old astronomy was wrong about something real and permanent, and to get at that reality afresh, to see it again more clearly and more trimly was the only solution that in the end counted for anything [ibid., p.230].

Fosdick teaches us to be aware of our limitations and our need to change our religious views with the times, but he also admonishes us to keep our eyes on the stars, on the ultimate things which are as real today as they have ever been. In short, he tells us to "believe both in abiding stars and changing astronomies"

"Without faith in God," his sermons testify, "the whole climate of man’s life would become so arctic that the best in man’s ethical life would become impossible." Fosdick declared that if God is not personal, then he would have no concern for human life and "a God of no concern is a God of no consequence." And in one of his most moving sermons he declared: "If we are to have a profound religion we may indeed throw away our old, childish, anthropomorphic ideas of God, but we may not throw away God and leave ourselves caught like rats in the trap of an aimless, meaningless, purposeless universe" (The Power to See It Through [Harper, 1935], p.133).

Second, Fosdick tells us not to forget the importance of reason in faith. He lived through a period of violent theological upheaval when the winds of doctrine shifted unpredictably, often leaving the individual believer in confusion and turmoil. He had great difficulty with neoorthodoxy, which he believed downgraded human reason and overemphasized human sin. Fosdick valued reason not because of a naïve optimism, but because he himself had struggled with fundamentalism and obscurantism. As he once put it: "What present-day critics of liberalism often fail to see is its absolute necessity to multitudes of us who would not have been Christians at all unless we could thus have escaped the bondage of the then reigning orthodoxy" (The Living of These Days, p. 66).

Certainly, reason is not infallible. Human beings are highly prejudiced and imperfect. The first rule for all who believe in a progressive world, he once said, is not to believe in it too much. But still the Christian faith must speak to our deepest insights into our own humanity; otherwise, faith becomes an arbitrary exercise. "Faith and reason." Fosdick insisted, "are not antithetical opposites. They need each other. All the tragic superstitions which have cursed religion throughout its history have been due to faith divorced from reason" (ibid., p. 258). Fosdick warns us that we ignore humanity’s rational nature at our own peril. At present we see many faiths competing for the allegiance of humankind; how will we choose among them? Fosdick answers: "To take the best insights of them all, to see the incompleteness and falsity in them all, to trust none of them as a whole, to see always that the Reality to be explained is infinitely greater than our tentative, conditioned explanations -- that seems to me wisdom." (ibid., p. 232).

IV

Finally, Fosdick grounded his faith in personal and social experience, in the tragedies and failures, the hopes and dreams of individuals. The most vital thing in religion, he said again and again, is firsthand personal experience. Fosdick was greatly influenced by Walter Rauschenbusch and the social gospel movement, and his intense social concerns are reflected in his writing and preaching. One of humankind’s most insistent needs, he wrote in The Meaning of Service, is the interpretation of religion in terms of service and the attachment of religion’s enormous driving power to the tasks of service. He was a pacifist in World War II. Echoing William James, he insisted that the only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic. And he was an early supporter of Margaret Sanger and her planned-parenthood campaign. He was involved in the great social issues of his day. He declared that "the ultimate criterion of any civilization’s success or failure is to be found in what happens to the underdog." Fosdick believed that both the social and personal dimensions of the gospel were essential:

As a preacher I found myself constantly on a two-way street. If I started with the social gospel I ran into the need of better individual men and women who alone could create and sustain a better social order, and so found myself facing the personal gospel; and if I started with the personal gospel, I ran straight into the evils of society that ruin personality, and so found myself facing the social gospel [Ibid., p. 280].

Fosdick teaches us that personal and social experiences are equally important and that both should form the crucible of authentic faith. For it is in both personal and social spheres that the moral imperatives become real and the spiritual needs become obvious, that we experience sin and guilt along with love and forgiveness, and that "we do confront Jesus Christ -- disturbed, provoked, challenged, fascinated by him and, if we will, ushered by him into a new life."

Harry Emerson Fosdick was and is a man for all seasons, one who speaks as clearly to us today as he did 30 years ago. Life for him was a continuous adventure into the unknown, into a future in whose possibilities he believed -- a future that demands insight and daring. Humanity, he always insisted, "desperately needs what Christianity at its best has to offer." Fosdick gave his best to his life and faith; he asks the same of us:

Grant us wisdom,

Grant us courage

For the living of these days.