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Awakened by Easter

I am writing this guest editorial on a red formica-topped table in the small kitchen of my mother's quiet, early morning house. It is several weeks before Easter, but resurrection is on my mind. Upstairs the floor creaks as the elder of my two younger brothers gets out of bed. Otherwise, this old brick house in the Nicetown section of North Philadelphia is empty and soundless. Somewhere over southern Africa our youngest brother is flying west and north, hastening to mother’s funeral two days from now. Earlier this week, after a long illness, Patricia Wilmore slipped away only a few weeks from what would have been her ninety-fifth birthday.

There is a reason why I could not sleep. It has to do with more than the nagging reminder of a promise to write this editorial. It is the fact that this old house, so recently bereft of its gray haired matriarch, is full of the glory of the resurrection this morning, and the thought comes to me that it is just not possible to sleep en veloped in the glow and glory of the Risen Christ. One has to be up and doing something worthwhile, something that draws strength from the resurrection, something related to the victory over death.

This house, this little space on God’s earth, so inseparably connected to other spaces around the world where our extended family resides, is the center of the strange phenomenon I am experiencing this bright February morning. This emanation, this something inexhaustible that streams from this place, the navel of our world, I cannot explain except to say that it energizes, awakens, fills everything with force and vitality. I believe it can only be the mystical effulgence of the resurrection left by my mother’s departure from this temporary haven and her arrival in a new and more permanent, eternal home.

It seems almost too unctious to say that we, all of the old C & C fire-fighters who may read these lines, need this power of the resurrected Christ to get off our duffs. I don’t mean to be overly romantic about it. There is nothing very romantic about the desperation some of us feel when we try to operate in this crazy world outside of the gravitational field of Easter. It rather takes cold, pure logic to recognize, here at the beginning of a new year and the Bush administration, that we Christians -- Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox, black and white. men and women, liberals and conservatives -- are dying. The United States of America is sick and the churches of this nation, no better off, are a most unlikely source of healing. I cannot remember a time, either before or after the 1960s, when we Christians were more confused, more demoralized, and in greater disarray -- a rudderless ship in a heavy sea. In fact, the whole society seems caught up in a paralyzing ennui, except perhaps the new and very rich who rode into power eight years ago with six-shooters blazing and white sombreros waving, behind a Hollywood cowboy who sanctimoniously and effectively represented their interests in the name of "less government means better government."

They Ate the Cake

It strikes me with something akin to terror to think how we permitted ourselves to be taken in, silenced and neutralized, by the boyish grin and a trickle-down prosperity while resurgent racism, Rambo militarism, cultural philistinism, and unregulated, let-them-eat-cake capitalism swaggered across the stage on an eight-year run. If I were asked what in the world happened, how did we let ourselves get into that situation, I should only reply that most of us Democrats, who were out there battling twenty years ago, fell asleep at the switch. While we were dreaming Martin’s dream and waiting for some new messiah to arrive and save "the gains of the ‘60s," this new group off middle-aged, increasingly well-off stock- and bondholders, corporate managers and their cadres of young urban professionals who never had it so good, were walking away with their loot and leaving the nation with a deficit which in 1990 will probably be in excess of $l54 billion. In the meantime, our new leader is proposing to deal with the unprecedented problems of the city, child-care, education, homelessness, and the environment without raising taxes. An economic policy that will surely have to out-voodoo anything that Ronald Reagan was able to conjure up.

If Easter does anything for us this year, let it rouse us from our apathetic slumber and give us the energy to build some fires under George Bush and the 101st Congress before this new four-year period gets very far along. It is past time for us secular humanists, wimp liberals, and unborn-again spoilers of the American Dream to wake up.

Since rereading 1 Corinthians 15 during these days of quiet bereavement I have been more than usually sensitive to the New Testament image of death as sleep, to the several connotations and implications of words in the Bible that speak of sleeping and awakening, perishing and quickening, death and resurrection. The Scriptures have nothing to do with somnolence and inactivity. They call us out of sleep into wakefulness, out of darkness into enlightenment -- eyes open, fists clenched and punching, poised on tiptoes like high-strung boxers bobbing and weaving before the hell.

Why do the cults and sects make so much better use of these images and metaphors than the church? I remember how often Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologv, and the late Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke about being awake! clear! rousing ‘a race of dead men and women from their sleep of death," and getting them "on the battlefield against the Devil!" Such talk feeds on the idea of resurrection. The sleep of death is understood to have been banished and the true believers are called to awake, full of energy and vitality, strengthened to do what they have to do in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and "unto the uttermost parts of the earth."

New Morning

It is undoubtedly bad exegesis, but a useful -- if eisegetical -- application of 1 Corinthians 15:6b, "but some are fallen asleep" to describe what has happened to the forces of progressive Christian action in recent years with such a metaphor. Some of us who were so deeply involved in the urban mission, the fight against racial segregation. opposition to the war in Vietnam, the struggle for the rights of Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and women, freedom in southern Africa, and hands off Central America, badly need to hear Paul’s exclamation in verse 34, "Awake to righteousness, and sin not!"

For it is as true of us as it was of the Corinthians that we have shamefully lost the knowledge of God and must renew our faith in the resurrection and the claim it lays upon the church of Christ before we can get on with the mission of liberation.

Sitting here this morning. I am aware of a great loss, but also of a great encouragement -- personally and in terms of our common struggle for a more just and responsible society. I have a keen sense that this quiet house that seems so empty is really full of power and life as never before, and that this is also true of the world at Easter, 1989. Life! Obviously I am not talking about the mechanical motion of the planets or the rumpus of atoms and molecules, but about the eternal beingness of intelligent, purposing, seeking life. That is what the church and the nation need today as we blunder into a world in which the desire of Americans for wealth and power has been the source of so much benevolence, and yet so much anguish and death.

Life! Life that breaks through denial, negation, and oppression to freedom, justice, and peace, not only for Americans, but for every person on earth.

Life! Life that posits, affirms, and defends all we believe in and hold dear -- loving justice and tenderness against all attempts by the Enemy, who always appears as an angel of light, to wipe them out and return the world to the power of death, to the anarchy of "might makes right" and "only the fittest deserve to survive." But life will not be suppressed. Death is swallowed up in the victory of Christ who stands against such an insensible, dying world and, through our ambassadorship, raises it from the dead. Easter calls us to wake up. Wake up and choose life!

From Creche to Crucifixion: A Pilgrimage

No matter how much we may anticipate or enjoy the Christmas season, there has got to be a little Scrooge in all of us. There are times when the spirit of that bitter old cynic attempting to block out the overzealous conviviality and joviality of the season strikes a chord.

One of the reasons that people suffer hives, crying jags, drinking bouts, and plain orneriness in the Christmas season is the rules: Everyone has got to celebrate, renew family ties, exchange gifts, and above all "be happy." Most people really can’t manage it, and they suffer the psychic disease of the season -- depression. But the church and Christians haven’t handled the celebration much better. We are always tempted to gild the story over, covering its hard paradoxes with tinsel and glitter. We want to see only the joyful celebration, feel the warmth of the stable, and hear the angels’ glorious song. We don’t want to think about rejoicing at the birth of one who will suffer and die. Our need to remember the joy and forget the pain of this celebration may be due to the world we live in, a world threatened by all kinds of catastrophes -- some we know, and some we cannot name. Who has not wanted to put aside misgivings and uncertainties when a child is born into the world?

A few weeks ago I was in San Salvador, standing with some friends down by the railroad tracks where the poorest displaced people had built shelters with sticks and mud and a piece of corrugated tin, that familiar material symbolizing wretched poverty all over this world. Beside these hovels a Palestinian stable would look like a palace. In the midst of it all, suddenly surrounding us, were small children with upturned faces full of innocence and curiosity, looking for some sign of caring approval, a smile of recognition from these "gringo strangers," and shouting "toma mi foto" -- take my picture. It’s those children’s version of the slogan "I am somebody."

If only I could have basked in the sunlight of the shining faces of those children whose state of being almost has the power to wash one clean! But I couldn’t. For a shadow hangs over their young lives, making it more than likely that a number of them will die of malnutrition or bombs or be made orphans when their parents disappear.

Can we handle the paradox of it all? Birth, new life, coming into existence in the midst of physical squalor, economic impoverishment, and daily terror. Christmas is so full of innocence and wonder and glory that it makes the pulse pound and the heart beat fast. But if we really experience the Nativity we are faced with the heartache and suffering embedded deep in the nature of the event: No decent place for his birth, the fear of discovery by the wrong people, all the children who died because he was born, the anxious flight into a foreign country.

Christmas is a symbol of joy and hope and love in the world. But it is also a reminder of another truth: There is no deliverance unless someone suffers and sacrifices. Isn’t that the meaning of the anguished and painful cry out of Mary’s "insides" that brings the child into the world? And what about that other cry of forlorn abandonment on the lips of the baby who grew up and hung on a cross? Is this not a truth that sometimes escapes us -- that the rough-hewn cradle in the beginning and the "old rugged cross" at the end are made of the same wood? This symbolizes that at the heart of things is a hard and unacceptable reality that another is always suffering that we may live, someone always going to prison that we might be free.

The campesinos of San Salvador will celebrate Christmas with all the joy and festivity of their faith, but they would be the first to admit that because of the death of Archbishop Romero, many more of them are alive today. The challenge of a real celebration of Christmas is to make the connections between that wonderful story and "our story," whoever we are and wherever we live. We need to under-

stand the relationship between a desperate housing shortage for low income people in New York City and the story that there is "no room in the inn"; between the fearful flight of Mary and Joseph and people fleeing from war and repression in Central America; between the "slaughter of innocents" and millions of children dying of starvation in Africa; the incredible innocence of the babe in the crib and our cynical, worldly-wiseness that taught us we could be bought for the right amount of money, the right opportunity, or the right cause.

The pilgrimage to Christmas is not an easy one for people of intellect and learning, to find their way to a stable and bow before some Truth wrapped in humble clothes. But even if we get there we’d like there to be joy and adoration without thinking of the outcome. Our dilemma is how to rejoice in the Nativity without sentimentalizing it; how to praise with the angels this new Beginning without forgetting the tragic ending. No one speaks of this enigmatic celebration with more insight into the mystery than T. S. Eliot in his poem "Journey of the Magi":

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

If only we could have kept the baby in the creche. But he grew up and spoke the truth and got hounded and harassed, tried and convicted, and put to death. Somehow the end was there in the beginning. But we don’t want to see it. We would flee from the hard truth that just as death follows birth as surely as night day, so the Christian promise of rebirth is inseparable from, even dependent upon, the very death we fear.

So in spite of the beauty and joy of this celebration, we are troubled and afraid. But if we can embrace the whole story of Christmas, holding on to the anguish as well as the glory, we may yet experience a truly faithful celebration.

 

Some Things Just Aren’t Right

Some things just aren’t right. Something incompatible with common sense and basic values is happening in America.  It has to do with crime and punishment: the way greed and inhumanity have made a gross industry out of locking people up in cages. We’ve heard it all before; more money spent on prisons then education, health care, general welfare. The Bureau of Justice Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics in 1998 reported that the United States spends approximately $34.18  billion dollars per year on incarceration. That’s a lot. of money, almost ninety-four million dollars each day of the year. we have been reminded enough of how many people could be enrolled in drug treatment programs for that amount of money. Over 6.8 million people. Or in job training, children in childcare programs, public housing subsidies, college scholarships, medical insurance for the eleven million children in America who have no coverage; the list is long. It doesn’t. seem to impress us. We rationalize that we are willing to spend the money to make our streets safe, It. hasn’t arid it won’t. Often the opposite. We locked up more than a million nonviolent offenders last year. Most will be released. Most will return to society worse than before; more apt. to be embittered and violent. Do we not care at. all for them? Do we not care for ourselves?

 

           Some while back I tarried by the mail box on our country road, pretending to sift through the mail. Monthly bills and several envelopes with return addresses from Christian missionary sounding organizations, all saying they were sending the information I had requested and all asking for money at the end. I recall there being an unusual batch from the missionary sounding folk that day. I also recall supposing that the fabrication “information you requested” had to do with the imminence of my seventy-fifth birthday and the senders’ assumption that old people often don’t remember whether they requested information or not. (Shame on Christian sounding organizations preying on old people.)

I tarried that. day because a work crew of county prisoners was approaching.  I was acquainted with a few of them from previous visits to the county prison and I wanted to spend a little time with them as they picked up trash. The guard called a ten minute rest break right at our mail box. There were eleven of them and one guard who was himself a prisoner. A “trusty”. Nine of the men were black. Our county is sixteen to one white. Nothing surprising there, I thought. White people are not locked up as often as black people. Not even for the same offense.

It is almost never difficult to get prisoners to talk. I quickly learned that. all except one were serving sentences for drug related of fences. That troubled rue deeply. It troubled me in part. because I was a drug addict for more than forty years and never spent a night in prison. I was frisked numerous times, especially during the last several years of my addiction when airport security had become so exacting. On more than one occasion hard evidence of my addiction was discovered. Sometimes in copious measure. The evidence was ignored. I was never arrested nor detained. Unfortunately my drug, said by many to be the hardest drug of all, was legal. I say unfortunately because my drug of choice, nicotine, will kill you. Directly, undeniably it kills a hundred and fifty thousand a year in our country alone. In related, contributory cases it is more like four hundred and fifty thousand. In addition to our own fellow citizens, if we have any degree of moral accountability left, we cannot ignore the numberless millions in what. we patronizingly call Third World countries who have died and will die from our callous exports. (What are Second World countries? I assume we are First World.)

           Eight of the prisoners I talked with were there for marijuana charges, two for crack cocaine. Certainly smoke going into the lungs from any source is not healthy. But there is no evidence that marijuana has ever killed anyone. Unlike cocaine, which kills about twenty thousand people a year. But why don't we expend our energy and funds on treatment instead, of prisons? Prisons simply aren’t working.

           The full import and irony of my ten minutes with the prisoners did not hit me until later. Here they were, sitting under the shade of a cottonwood tree at the end of a long country driveway smoking tobacco cigarettes. Sonic smoked three cigarettes as we sat there talking. The folly and irony of it all. Prisoners of the state, under the gun for using or dealing in a drug which is relatively harmless. Yes, sitting under a shade tree in eight of the law using a lethal drug. Twelve men, partaking of a substance that will kill them, but which is legal.

There is more to their story, The trash they were collecting consisted mainly of beer cans and liquor bottles. The contents of those two can kill you also, but you can buy them over the counter. Nothing like dying legally I reckon.

Further irony, further lunacy. A local woman was arrested last week for smuggling two marijuana cigarettes into the prison where her son was doing time. They were concealed in a toothpaste tube. She also brought two cartons of tobacco cigarettes. No questions there.

I stood there watching as the orange-vested prisoners moved out of sight. A certain sadness gripped me. They were all so young, None over twenty-five. And they were mostly black. Not right. Not just. What is in store for them?

Where will they be when they are forty? Or fifty, if they live that long? I remembered a neighbor’s son and daughter, about the ages of these young men. They have been involved in illegal drugs since their mid-teens. They have been arrested many times but never convicted or even tried. They are white and their parents can afford counsel. Not fair.

Now I am wondering why I am putting things to paper which are common knowledge. Just what is this story supposed to be about? Thus far it must sound as if I am arguing for the unfettered use of all hard drugs. I’m not. Someone I knew and loved - as close to me as one person can get to another - died at forty-five. Years of heavy use of amphetamines - legally obtained for he was a pharmacist - was the presumed cause. In addition, I was born and raised a God fearing Baptist in Mississippi. Anything stronger than aspirin was considered Sinful in our circle. Except, of course, nicotine. At least we didn’t know at the time what a killer it was.

What this story is about. is the loss of a war and the sin and insanity of continuing to wage that war with the same weapon: prisons. From the well-meaning but. naive First Lady Reagan and her solution of “Just say no,’ to an equally well-meaning but equally naive Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his mandatory maximum sentences, we have been defeated in our War on Drugs.

When we finally realized that we had lost the undeclared war in Vietnam, those remaining in Saigon climbed to the highest building and clung to the last helicopter leaving the country. Now it is time for the metaphor to be exercised in the drug war. We have lost. But there are those who will not admit defeat. Who are they? First and foremost they are the ones who make enormous profits from what is now recognized as the prison-industrial complex. Locking people up is big business. Not just for construction companies but for such private enterprises as the Corrections Corporation of America, a Tennessee-based company that is leading the way in the exorbitant campaign to turn all prisons over to private enterprise. Last year their net. profit was $53.9 million, since corporate prisons make their profits based on the daily number of prisoners, longer sentences are the strategy. Not rehabilitation. Not justice.

We have all read the erroneous claims. “One crack cocaine cigarette and you’re addicted for life.” Generally not true, although it is certainly a powerful addiction when one is hooked. There seems to be no accurate measurement of precisely how many die each year from cocaine. Thousands, but nothing approaching those who die from nicotine. And, cocaine addiction, like all addictions, is a treatable illness. No one denies that. Why are they imprisoned when in the most maximum security prison drugs are as easily come by as on the streets? Why are the sick not treated? Crack cocaine, the drug that started the panic of building prisons, is used by more whites than by blacks - but blacks are locked up five times more often.  Not fair. We know that.

We have heard the statistics and horror stories. Every twenty seconds someone is arrested on a drug charge. Every week, a new jail or prison is built even though we already have the world’s largest. penal system. Every day we read of such things as a young mother getting life in prison for $40 worth of cocaine. Six hundred thousand people were arrested in this country last year for possessing or selling marijuana, a drug most authorities regard as less harmful -than alcohol. If it is harmful at. all. We know a lot of things. We know that in 1970 less than 200,000 were in prisons. Soon there will be two million. We know that the construction of more prisons is not. solving the problem of drug use and is threatening to bankrupt the nation.

There is something else we know. The majority of religious people are remaining silent on the rapid increase in incarceration and even more quiet on the unfair, racially imbalanced and bankrupting threat of America’s drug laws.  Despite the fact that our founder, a prisoner who suffered the legal death penalty, made no provisions for even the existence of prisons. He, following the prophet Isaiah, said of them that he had come to open their doors and let the captives go free. He talked of forgiveness and restoration. We who claim to be his disciples are obliged to offer leadership in release to captives who are victims of the gross injustices in America’s drug laws. The drug addiction which claimed me for more than forty years can be, and is, treatable. One would think that my support of such a killer drug would have required my imprisonment, but it didn’t. Nor do we incarcerate our victims of alcohol. We do our best to treat them and restore them to productive lives, Why can’t we do it with the other addicts?

If we should decriminalize drugs and turn to treatment instead of incarceration, as we have with other drugs, there is something we must be honest enough to face from the outset.. It will not stop the use of those drugs. The use of them, particularly in the early phases, will increase. It happened after prohibition. There was an increase in the number of alcoholics after prohibition was repealed. But we didn’t put them in prison. We provided treatment, encouraged such programs as Alcoholics Anonymous, and few would argue that the country was better of f under the crime-ridden weight of the Eighteenth Amendment. Now we have a choice of spending ourselves into bankruptcy with the spiraling construction of more prisons, and immediately telling them up because of our nonsensical drug laws, or taking a long, hard look at what is just, right and necessary.

Our actions are incompatible with our words at prayer. Our talk is of the little ones. The poor. Most often our actions benefit the moneyed. A recent TV tabloid spent a quarter of an hour showing from hidden cameras maids stealing twenty dollars, and facing swift justice in court. On the same program there was a sound bite on officials of the nation’s largest. HMO convicted of stealing millions. We can predict the outcome of the trial after years of appeal.

The picture is bleak from a radical Christian viewpoint, but there are glimmers of hope. Perhaps we give up too quickly on our own households. Our churches, synagogues and mosques. we are seeing sizable numbers in each religious declension who feel compelled to give at least passing attention to correcting the cancerous condition in America that is roaring out of control, threatening to destroy us all by forever bigger appropriations to feed the gods of unfreedom, and the coffers of the already rich. To do otherwise makes liars of us all.

Many years ago a Caucasian share cropper on a Mississippi farm reported to his landlord that he had witnessed the lynching of a Black man over the week-end. Before leaving the man said, “Now I don’t want you to think I’m a tattletale. But some things just ain’t right.”

We’re still lynching a lot of people. And still, some things just ain’t right.

 

 

 

 

When History Is All We Have

They say that Baptists have always fought among themselves. And that there is no fight like a family fight. The latter is true. But the original Baptists, whether the Anabaptists of sixteenth century Europe or the English Separatists of the seventeenth, were too busy struggling for physical survival to engage in internecine squabbles. However, on July 17 Baptists in Nashville, Tennessee were-fighting each other. With the force of arms.

I suppose I had no reason to be there. Probably had not even a right to be there, having deserted the steeples a long time ago. ‘‘I just came to smell the flowers," I answered when a reporter asked me what I was doing there. Really, I had just gone to watch. I soon discovered that I was not prepared for what I was watching: Hired guards armed with .38-caliber revolvers or 9mm automatic pistols standing between two hostile groups, each claiming to be authentic Baptists. What’s going on here?

C & C readers are familiar with the events leading up to the showdown. For twelve years the event has been brewing, since Paul Pressler, a Houston judge who, as a magistrate. would not have been allowed to join the original Baptist movement, and Paige Patterson, a Dallas preacher, underling of W. A. Criswell, senior pastor of that city’s First Baptist Church, met at Café du Monde in New Orleans and devised a scheme to wrest control of the Southern Baptist Convention from those they considered too liberal to be trusted with the business of God.

Their plan was simple. Members of all hoards of trustees and committees are appointed by the president on a rotating basis. By electing a president sympathetic with their views for ten successive years. total control would be theirs.

It worked. Year after year thousands of messengers (the Southern Baptist term for delegates) poured into convention centers in Dallas, Miami, St. Louis, Atlanta, San Antonio, Las Vegas for the annual gathering. They came in cars, church buses, recreation vehicles, airplanes. and on trains to cast their ballots. Each year the Pressler-Patterson faction won. The mission was accomplished.

Divided into what came to be known by the press as moderate and fundamentalist camps, neither group pleased with what it. was called, the struggle escalated. This year 38,000 gathered in the New Orleans Superdome and elected Morris Chapman of Wichita Falls, Texas. It was the twelfth victory for the fundamentalists. The occasion was marked by a raucous celebration at Café du Monde where plaques were presented to the founders of the "takeover" movement The moderates cried ‘‘foul!" The fundamentalists went about it.

To the victors belong the spoils. Two years ago. perhaps to test their strength, they took on the administration and faculty of Southeastern Seminary, a school many considered to be the most progressive of their six theological schools, Southeastern, in Wake Forest, North Carolina, is now an academic skeleton of what it had been; the president replaced by one to the liking of the fundamentalist, the faculty in disarray.

Caesar’s Centurions

All of that was prelude to what happened in Nashville on July 17. Immediately following the New Orleans convention, members of the Southern Baptist Executive Committee -- a body of seventy-seven members appointed by past and present presidents to carry on the business of the church between annual meetings -- demanded the resignations of the director and news editor of Baptist Press, an agency charged with writing and distributing news stories concerning Southern Baptists. For some years they had drawn fire for filing news stories many considered not in the best interests of Pressler and the fundamentalist side. When the two men, Al Shackleford and Dan Martin, both nationally respected journalists, refused to resign, a special session of the Executive Committee was called for July 17.

The meeting was scheduled to begin in the auditorium of the Baptist Building at 901 Commerce, Nashville, Tennessee, at ten o’clock in the morning. Two hours earlier more than two hundred people had gathered in support of the two men. And in support of the historic Baptist notion of freedom of information. Speculation inside the auditorium was that the first order of business would be a vote for executive session. Instead, at about a quarter past the hour word spread that the Executive Committee was in secret session in a room upstairs. Earlier, barricades of tables and chairs had blocked the stairs to the second floor. Discovering that they had been removed, the group hurried upstairs. Instead of a barricade armed guards blocked entry.

It was strange for me at first. Why were we surprised? Why did any of us even care? Had we not seen the so-called moderate groups when they were in control, do little better? Had we not watched as they said little, and did less, during the civil rights era? Vietnam? Who among them lifted an editorial voice? And who among them offered leadership to give equality to the women in their ranks, who constituted more than 50 percent of their numbers? Had we forgotten that sometimes our own writings had been kept from the shelves of their bookstores? Was it not they who built the abomination in which we were now standing from the tithes of the poor?

What are we to make of this multimillion-dollar building with its flaunting display of opulence and tight security dedicated to the lowly Galilean? Where are they at this moment, the holdover moderates who have not yet been purged from their plush offices here but probably will be soon, who hang onto the security of Mammon and vow to speak out as soon as retirement age is reached? Why do they cringe behind their own closed doors instead of storming the guards and money changers screaming, "In the name of Almighty God, stop it! Why don’t we? What freedom of information, what historic principle are we defending with our silent presence? Is this not what many of us thought we had walked away from in frustration and despair years ago? Just what is going on here?

Why Are They Singing?

A young woman I had known earlier, a seminary graduate still unemployed and unordained by the church of her rearing, came up to me and whispered one of the questions I had been asking myself, her words lost in the rising clamor of the crowd facing the gunmen. "Why are we here?" she asked. I couldn’t recall her name, so 1 addressed her as "Pastor." It proved to be an appropriate title. I told her I didn’t know. She seemed less puzzled than I; like she did know. She drifted away.

Someone was trying to make a statement. I assumed that it was for the press. I couldn’t hear much of what he said. Something about Al and Dan each being offered five minutes to defend their work over the years for Baptist Press. I made out that as journalists and as Baptists they were refusing to participate in this secret meeting. Instead, they stood near the guarded door -- their trial, with neither stated charge nor defense, continuing inside.

I watched the woman who had spoken to me. She moved from one person to another, whispering as she went. "Roger Williams." She mouthed the words, turning in my direction and then to others. Yes, I thought. That’s why we’re here. For Roger Williams. He who stood against the intolerance of another religious establishment of another day, bent as surely as this one on stopping the free flow of religious communication. Roger Williams, who gave us our beginning in the new country: the first Baptist church of America. The lone courage of Roger Williams. Of course. For him we are gathered.

The woman drifted away again, then caught my eye as she formed the name of Isaac Backus on her lips. Yes, yes, Isaac Backus. He who stood against king and court in defense of religious liberty, and saw his mother spend thirteen weeks in prison for refusing to pay a church tax. This would be a familiar scene to him, watching Caesar’s centurions guarding the Faith. The raw fortitude of Isaac Backus. We are here for him. And for his mother.

I watched as the young woman whispered another name. "John Leland," Ah, yes, I remembered. The Baptist preacher of Virginia. who would grant no peace to his neighbors, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, until the First Amendment to the Constitution spoke of religious liberty and separation of church and state. Without him those rights would not have been. I thought of Bill Finlator, a Carolina preacher, asking why every Baptist in America is not a card earring member of the ACLU, since it was a Baptist notion from the outset. I heard someone say that we were there in honor of, and with apology to, John Leland. And to a host of Baptist martyrs besides.

"What does this mean?" a journalist from Fort Worth asked me. "It means that the Baptist movement is over," I replied. "Over. Done. Gone. Dead."

"Then why are they singing?" he asked, scribbling hurriedly on his note pad, then moving through the crowd. I had been so occupied with my own thoughts, and the names spoken by the young woman, that I had not heard the singing at all. Now I listened. Two hundred people, barred from participating in, or even hearing the business of their church, lifting their voices in disruptive hymn-singing, surely stopping the proceedings on the other side of the secured door. Young and old, male and female, standing there. Some smiling as if in jubilation. Some sobbing as if in deep mourning. I had second thoughts and searched the area for the Fort Worth journalist. I wanted to amend my answer to his first question. And try to answer the second. When I couldn’t find him, I spoke to the woman who had moved back beside me. "What do you think, Pastor?" I asked her.

"Maybe history is all we have left," she replied. She seemed somehow joyous. "But there is something here in which to exult as well. For so long as a little band of believers stand huddled together facing armed guards, in a house allegedly built for the glory of God; standing, singing, smiling, weeping, hoping, the historic Baptist notion of freedom will never die." I asked her to write down what she had said. It seemed important to remember.

At about 1:30 it was announced that Al Shackleford and Dan Martin had been relieved of their duties with Baptist Press. Effective immediately.

God Newborn

"God’s my size! " The three-year-old girl jumped up and ran to tell her mother. "Mom, God’s my size!" She got the idea while lying on her stomach looking at the creche beneath the Christmas tree. Eye-level with a baby is a good position from which to do theology.

At Christmas God is newborn, less like Michaelangelo’s muscular men and more like an infant in wet diapers sucking milk from its mother’s breast. God is less like an equation in theoretical physics and more like a hungry three-year-old in a refugee camp. At Christmas God is less like a come-of-age, postmodern adult and more like the toddler laughing at being able to walk.

II

Adults look at the baby and say, "This can’t be God! This is a bawling baby!" The protests are diverse. "This can’t he God! This baby is Jewish. This baby is poor. This baby is illegitimate. This baby is male. This baby is traditional. This baby is a refugee. This baby is, well, a baby."

Children look at the baby and say, "God’s our size!"

Adults look at the baby, shuffle their feet in the straw, and mutter to each other:

"Adoptionist Christology is preferable to Incarnation."

"The Ancient Near East was full of Incarnation myths."

"Doesn’t Mary look well, theologically speaking?" "This wouldn’t he necessary except for sin."

"This would he necessary even without sin."

"When he’s older he’ll amount to something."

Meanwhile, children touch and say, "God’s our size!"

III

Christian theology is done by adults for adults; it is God-talk which usually neglects children. Whether as Lord, Liberator, or Lover, Jesus is portrayed as an adult for adults. We judge our Christologies by how well they suit adult needs only. We write our anthropologies as if being human begins at adulthood. When we accuse someone of "playing God" or urge them "to God," it is not a gurgling infant or a three-year-old refugee we have in mind.

Christmas celebrates God as newborn, wholly dependent. This baby is not just a preview of the real thing: an adult. Dependency does not mean decreased or incomplete humanity. Adults uneasy with their own dependence on each other and on children hasten to warn against "sentimentality" at Christmas, and rush to make this liturgical season only a prelude to adult history.

IV

How can we talk about God in this age? Is it feminist to talk about God as a human baby? What does a crying baby have to do with the federal deficit, not to mention the debt? Will the mainline churches grow or shrink if they say God has wet diapers? If God is a child, does the Vatican need a new study on the representative nature of the priesthood? Isn’t the God question more related to charmed and colored quarks and quantum mechanics? Why not attend to the preborn God? How does liberation take place in a manger? How can you posit an incarnate God in a situation of religious pluralism and interfaith dialogue? Doesn’t celebrating Christmas reinforce codependence? Why not engrave a baby on this crystal pyramid? The blizzard of questions muffles any good news.

But at Christmas adults are offered again grace abundant in the newborn and embodied in three-year-olds. Theological sophistication will have its day. Ethical complexity will have its place. Working for justice will have its season. But at Christmas it is all right to lie on the floor -- dirt or carpet, prison or home, office or shelter -- eye-level with a baby, listening to a three-year-old, near or far, call out, "God’s my size!"

A Fund for ‘Evangelical’ Scholars

"A Foundation for Theological Education" (AFTE) is a small private fund, based largely in Texas, with a predominantly United Methodist constituency and a special interest in the renewal and transvaluation of the Wesleyan tradition -- not "for Methodists only" but for the Christian community at large. Its board, which includes bishops, theological professors, pastors and laypersons, reflects a wide range, of viewpoints and interests. Board chairman is Edmund Robb, Jr., of the Ed Robb Evangelistic Association of Marshall, Texas. AFTE’s program is three-tiered:

1. The support of graduate theological study for Methodists in first-rate universities, with a view to the enlargement of the talent pool of well-trained "evangelicals" for service in both academy and church.

2. The promotion of continuing theological education on various levels, with a twin emphasis on scriptural Christianity on the one hand and intensive interaction among diverse Christian traditions on the other.

3. The undergirding of the cause of theological learning with endowed chairs and programs, whose chief behest will be an honest respect for the normative character of "the Wesleyan quadrilateral": Scripture, tradition, reason and "Christian experience."

AFTE is obviously, therefore, another voluntary religious association that understands itself as having been raised up to serve a special need. Our aims, we believe, are consonant with Methodism’s best traditions, but we have no official mandate and have not tarried for any. Our ambience is denominational; our outlook and spirit are ecumenical. Such associations, are as American as apple pie; why, then, a comment on yet another? The answer is that AFTE may be at least slightly "different" and that these differences may be important in the future of theological education (again, in United Methodism but also within the whole Christian community). In the first place, it is a conscious experiment in bridge-building, across an ugly chasm that has been dug for at least a half-century, between self-styled "Methodist evangelicals" and those of us who are not often labeled thus. It was born out of what seemed, for all the world, to be still another unedifying controversy.

Attacks on the Seminaries

Even the one-eyed know by now that the rise of "the evangelical movement" -- in numbers, strength and self-confidence -- is one of the major developments in American Protestantism, and has been for at least the past two decades. It is also common knowledge (usually explained away) that this development has not yet been registered, in any significant proportions within the liberal theological establishment. During these decades, of course, the evangelicals have done very well for themselves with their own seminaries, from which it has also been argued that this division makes for a comfortable and mutually acceptable arrangement (the old "separate but equal" slogan in a different context).

On the other side, it has long seemed to many of us in the "establishment" that the standard "evangelical" denunciations of our seminaries, toto genere, have been both unfair and unhelpful. In the United Methodist Church, for example, one of the evangelicals’ favorite targets since 1972 has been our denominational statement on "Doctrine and Doctrinal Standards" -- largely because of its open avowal of pluralism as a theological principle. The irony here is that one of the conscious aims of that statement had been to make welcome room for the evangelicals within the inclusive Methodist theological enterprise -- even while it was also trying to wall off the extreme dogmatists from the "right" and the barn-burners from the "left."

Thus, in 1975 when Dr. Robb (then president of the "Good News" movement) leveled a blast at all the United Methodist seminaries, claiming that in none of them could an evangelical student hope for a decent exposure to the Wesleyan heritage, there were not many of us in an other-cheek-turning mood. My own indignation was especially "righteous" since I was deeply involved, with others, in a protracted, earnest crusade to recover and re-present John Wesley (not only to Methodists but to other Christians as well) as a significant theologian and as a fruitful resource for contemporary ecumenical theology. My response was less than conciliatory; after all, what was there to expect but another salvo in reply?

It was, therefore, downright disconcerting to have Dr. Robb and some of his friends show up in my study one day with an openhearted challenge to help them do something more constructive than cry havoc. Needless to say, I’ve always believed in the surprises of the Spirit; it’s just that they continue to surprise me whenever they occur!

Points of Consensus

Here, obviously, was a heaven-sent opportunity not only for a reconciliation but also for a productive alliance in place of what had been an unproductive joust. Moreover, as we explored our problems, some unexpected items of agreement began to emerge. For example, there was the recognition, first off, that too many evangelicals (especially in the Methodist tradition) had made it all too easy for the liberal establishment to freeze them out on the grounds that they had not paid the going price for full academic respectability. All too often, John Wesley’s warmed heart is celebrated by those who ignore the import of that richly stored head of his and that superb set of scholarly tools that he kept burnished throughout his long career.

We also discovered a second agreement, variously expressed: that theology in the Wesleyan spirit must be truly ecumenical, or it is not truly Wesleyan. The evidence for this assertion is scattered throughout the Wesley corpus but is best summed up in his sermon on "Catholic Spirit" and in his open "Letter to a Roman Catholic." On a third crucial point we also found ourselves in genuine consensus: "evangelism," in the Wesleyan spirit, must speak of justice as earnestly as of justification, of Christian nurture and discipline as emphatically as of conversion, of Christian social action as boldly as of personal salvation.

It was these agreements that became the working charter for AFTE. For here were men and women willing to put their money and time where their convictions lay -- and so they have. Since 1976, 15 Wesley Fellowships have been awarded for doctoral programs in England and America. This means that soon there will be a larger "talent pool" of fully credentialed scholars than we have ever had before -- with more in the pipeline behind them.

Other aspects of the program are in various stages of development. On one point, however -- this business of "undergirding the cause of theological learning" -- the Texas Annual Conference of the UMC has already stolen a march on us and on everybody else. It has undertaken to endow a broadly conceived program in Wesley studies at Southern Methodist University.

A Lively Experiment

Our first "public event" that served to exhibit AFTE’s basic concerns and interests was held this past November at Notre Dame. A week-long "Colloquy on the Loss and Recovery of the Sacred," it had been designed as a small working conference of church leaders gathered from a broad spectrum of the various Christian traditions. These men and women were invited to grapple with a massive, urgent issue currently confronting the whole Christian community and contemporary culture -- in an ecumenical spirit of worship and dialogue, within an atmosphere of the warm hospitality of a great Christian university.

We knew that our design was promising when people like Cardinal Leo Josef Suenens, Martin E. Marty, Carl F. H, Henry and Richard Lovelace agreed to join us. Eighty invitations, to a wonderful array of men and women from many traditions, produced 58 acceptances from 11 denominations. It was as lively an experiment in continuing theological education as I have seen during half a century of such events.

The working group in which I participated had a brilliant Roman Catholic church historian for its moderator. Her stand-in was a Methodist pastor; the "rapporteur" was a Southern Baptist professor of theology. We also had two highly competent and articulate Reformed theologians (from two different denominations) to call us back to "orthodoxy" and a Mennonite scholar to remind us of the social imperatives of Christian simplicity. At the end of the first day’s session, I was in despair; at the rate we had started (or so it seemed), it would take at least a month for us to hammer out anything like a meaningful consensus. And yet that same group, by week’s end, had produced the prototext of one of the colloquy’s concluding statements.

A Sign of Hope

What heartened me most about the whole affair was how little formal talk there was about Christian unity and how much direct experience of it. The results were almost all that we had hoped for and are eager to promote -- with the fuller harvest yet to be reaped.

There is no way of knowing how far this little leaven of ours will go in our big church, now in conspicuous confusion, or in a Christian community in the throes of world revolution. But our work together thus far has already established several points that may have an important bearing on the future of theological education in America: (1) the party-strife between "evangelicals" and "charismatics" and "ecumenicals" is not divinely preordained and need not last forever; (2) the Wesleyan tradition has a place of its own in the theological forum along with all the others; (3) "pluralism" need not signify "indifferentism"; (4) "evangelism" and "social gospel" are aspects of the same evangel; (5) in terms of any sort of cost-benefit analysis, a partnership like AFTE represents a high-yield investment in Christian mission; and (6) the Holy Spirit has still more surprises in store for the openhearted.

Given so much, we may be justified in believing that such a venture may honestly be reckoned as a grace-full sign of hope, even in these raddled times.

Ordeal of a Happy Dilettante

Quite a lot has happened, both in the world and in my mind, in the last ten years. That we -- the world and my mind -- have come through them even partially intact is cause for earnest gratitude, for the odds often seemed stacked against us. It has been a demented time, a cliff-hanging time, a time of portents and marvels.

In it I have tried to be as relevant as possible -- especially when I could tell for certain what that meant and where I could distinguish between the really relevant and the merely novel. I have nothing but scorn for the dogmatists who stubbornly insist that they already have the truth in a handbasket, that they have had it all along and need only to proclaim it to have it heard by the elect. And I have sought sincerely to hear the new sounds and sights of the avant garde -- and their theological chaplains.

My assignment in this series, however, forced me to probe behind the frenzied calendar I have tried to keep this past decade and ask myself what it is that I have really been doing and trying to do. The answer, as far as I have come to one, seems to be that while I have been as busy and as discontent as Martha ever was the one thing needful in my theological career thus far has not been to keep up but to catch up.

For a long time now I have been convinced that one of the hidden causes of our current confusion is the often unrecognized hiatus in our consciousness between the Christian present and the Christian past. The Enlightenment and its theology caused a deep, near-fatal breach of continuity between contemporary Christianity and historic Christianity. The consequences of this are all around us, in the unhistorical and sometimes antihistorical developments in Christian thought. How can this breach be healed? How can a man be a modern Christian, one who has assimilated the theological impact of the nineteenth century, and still claim his full share of the whole of the Christian heritage? I have been puzzling over these questions a long time. Alongside a hundred practical ventures of one sort or another the one constant and continuing project I can see in my distracted labors has been the effort to recouple the past and the present -- and to persuade others that it must be done or at the very least attempted. To explain how I got started on such a project and what has happened to it in the past decade I have to go back to the beginning of my theological career.

Speaking in terms of atmospheres rather than dates, I was born and reared in the eighteenth century -- in a parsonage-home of warm, vital piety and in a college still devoted to a classical curriculum. My years at seminary and in the pastorate (1928-35) marked a brief but exciting passage into and through the nineteenth century. My conversion to liberalism came in the years of the Great Depression -- at the very time when the first effective critiques of liberal theology were being noticed in this country. It now seems long ago and far away, but that conversion left with me two significant residues that I still cherish: the liberal temper and the social gospel.

It was not until my years in the Yale graduate school (1935-38) that I was thrust boldly into the twentieth century -- this in the course of a degree in historical theology. There I first read Barth and Irenaeus, concurrently. I was "all shook up" by A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic, Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society and T. S. Eliot’s "The Wasteland." At Yale, I first heard of Kierkegaard and existentialism, and I actually met Paul Tillich. I took seminars in the Institute of Human Relations and wrote a dissertation on Origen that was passed by Robert Calhoun, Roland Bainton and Erwin Goodenough. What a jumble it all was -- and what an adventure! If I spread too wide and too thin at least I gained a range of insights and outlook that I would not even now exchange for a narrower specialization.

In this swift journey through three "centuries" I discovered for myself the radical tension between the Enlightenment and the relatively continuous Christian tradition down to the end of the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century stood -- and still stands -- as a sort of gap between my own theological childhood and maturity. I had pondered the previous breaks in the history of the church -- the transplantation from Jewish to Greek soil, the transition from an illicit to an established religion, the passage from the ancient to the medieval world, the upheaval of the Reformation and so on. In each of these instances the further development of Christianity depended on the way the transition was handled or mishandled. It seemed to follow, therefore, that one of the specific and fundamental tasks of twentieth-century Christianity was to deal with the nineteenth century. As a matter of fact, this has been the strongest impulse in those theologies which have dominated this century thus far. In Barth, Niebuhr and others I saw a variegated pattern of protest and assimilation; in others such as Tillich and Bultmann there was an equally variegated pattern of assimilation and protest. Similar configurations appear in the new biblical theology and in the theological work of the ecumenical movement.

In the field of church history and the history of doctrine, however, no such progress is apparent. Contemporary Christian historians have been caught in a bind between their historiography and their theology. Time was when the first Christian historian, Eusebius, could follow the simple maxim that history was the stage on which the struggle between God and the devil was being acted out. But it has now come to pass that the modern historian is committed to the contrary maxim: God does not intervene in history -- no appeal to divine action or causality will serve as an historical explanation. But what happens to church history when God is left out of it?

And yet we cannot escape our own church history, whatever it is. We do not do so even if we attempt a leap of faith directly from the present moment to the New Testament -- seeking to hear God’s Word, so to say, from out of time. The fact is that we hear what we hear with the apperception produced by our own histories, and these affect what we hear and what we do in response. Nor is it better to select one or another segment of Christian history, such as the first or the fifth or the sixteenth century, and make that the norm for our own. Both these approaches ignore the question of the identity and the continuity of the Christian community and its message throughout the total historical experience of that community. But this is the question that has to be solved if we are to deal with any major instance of discontinuity.

Grandiose as it may be, and ill equipped for it as I am, I came to believe that this inquiry into the continuity of historic Christianity in contemporary Christianity was my theological vocation. This has meant a double effort to comprehend the Christian tradition in its historic continuity and the modern world in its intellectual and spiritual ambiguities. I have of course sought to merit the respect of my fellow historians and to speak to the condition of my fellow moderns. But I’ve had no illusions that I could master such a job, even by my own standards of excellence. It was bound to make a man a dilettante. A perfectionist in my shoes would have gone down in despair. But a happy dilettante is like a dog walking on his hind legs: rather pleased with himself that he can manage it at all!

The master image of the nineteenth century -- man redeeming himself and his society -- has been shattered beyond easy repair. Zealous as I was in that iconoclasm I have come to think that we must now attend to the other face of Christian man -- his original righteousness and the basic health that God sustains even in his rebellious and sinful children. This idea has shaped my work on the relations between psychotherapy and the Christian message. But every shift in anthropology entails a readjustment in soteriology -- and this means that we must have a new Christology: a modern doctrine of the Savior of modern sinners. Again, if a modern man is to witness to Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, what sort of language, derived from what noetic categories, can he rightly use to celebrate his new life with God in Christ? Finally, how can he learn to think of himself in real relation with all other Christians "in this world and the next"? These are some of the "new" questions which I have seen emerging in the last few years and which I expect to see influencing the shape of theological things to come. At any rate they are the questions which have exercised my mind for the past decade, accounting for whatever changes have occurred.

In 1949 I was on the faculty at Yale and pastor of the Methodist church at Wallingford, Connecticut. It was an arduous and vastly stimulating situation. It signified that I wanted to be in close touch with the life of the church, to fill out my understanding of the Christian tradition and the contemporary world, and to work out a systematic theology on historical foundations. Presumably I could have done this as well at Yale as anywhere else. But like many another southerner who "left home’’ I was feeling a strong pull to go back -- to help with the development of theological education in a region where Protestantism was still vigorous and to work directly with the churches through a university set down in their midst. The call to Southern Methodist University in 1951 seemed to provide such an opportunity. So we moved, though not without a few backward glances in the course of the early years. On the whole it has turned out rather as we had hoped.

In this new setting I have become a more loyal churchman than I was before without ceasing to love academia one whit the less. I think I am as critical as ever of the churches’ failures -- of nerve, of wisdom, of vision. Certainly I am still distressed at the stale, flat and unprofitable business that often goes by the name of Christianity in all too many places. But I have also found an opportunity to work for something different and better within the churches themselves and to help with the training of ministers furnished for the future with the resources of the past. Moreover I have discovered more authentic life and power in the churches themselves than even the pious cynics ever see. The residence of the Holy Spirit among the people of God is still a reality -- and this has given both promise and hope, even in the midst of discontent.

This closer involvement in denominational affairs has had the effect of strengthening my commitment to the cause of ecumenical Christianity. I know now that the way to unity does not lie in the aggressive reassertion of our respective virtues or the recombination of the separated members of Christ’s body. If it comes at all it will be through the mutual discovery and affirmation within the separated churches of that common Christian history which we share as Christians. If we are able to do this, however, we must also prepare our peoples for the mutations in form and policy that are bound to follow.

I have already mentioned the fact that Christology has come to confront us again as if it were almost a new question. Along with many others I have spent the past ten years exploring this maze and mystery -- trying to rehearse its history and reformulate its import in modern terms. The gist of my conclusions thus far can be scantily summarized in five theses: (1) the definition of Chalcedon, understood in context, is still the basic text for a valid, modern Christology; (2) since Chalcedon, "orthodox" Christology -- East and West -- has failed to maintain a proper doctrine of the full and real humanity of Jesus Christ; ( 3) the Protestant stress on the work and corresponding de-emphasis on the person of Christ is a misunderstanding; (4) Enlightenment Christology was the function of Enlightenment anthropology and hence is now as archaic as its scholastic counterpart; (5) modern personality theory is a major new resource for the interpretation of the biblical and Chalcedonian witnesses to the Man of God’s own choosing. I would like to see a modern restatement of the two-natures doctrine that would move from our knowledge of the agent of our salvation to an understanding of the act of our salvation, to that faith-acting-in-love which is the Christian life.

Ten years ago, as I can see by my lecture notes, I was still laboring traditional phrases -- rational and irrational, natural and supernatural, transcendent and immanent, finite and infinite -- as metaphors about God and the world. Aided by biblical theologians I have come to see that this split-level language does not ring true in terms of the Bible or Christian experience. I have come to believe that it is better to begin with the fact that God is always present and acting, whether "known" or not. Then one can speak of the two different ways that he is present: either in his mystery or his manifestation. God-Mysterious is utterly ineffable; God-Manifest is actually knowable, but only when, where and as he chooses to reveal himself. We are aware of God-Mysterious -- and this awareness is as primitive as our awareness of motion, causality or self. We are also grasped by the presence of God-Manifest, and this supplies the data of religious knowledge. In neither case is God at our disposal.

Thus faith and reason are not two different ramps to two different levels of reality. Rather, they are two different responses to the two different modes of God’s presence and action. Faith cannot verify itself; reason cannot originate its data. Our language-games -- of worship and theology -- must reflect these two dimensions of experience. The language of worship adores God-Mysterious, confesses God-Manifest, and speaks of repentance, forgiveness and new being. It is therefore essentially doxological and confessional. It confesses, without rational proof, that the supreme manifestation of God-Mysterious is Jesus Christ -- in manifest fullness and not merely as symbol.

The language of theology is both like and unlike the language of worship. Theology is reflection upon the reality of worship and an explication of it. As such it is a rational affair -- receiving its data as given, testing its methodology, trying to make sense -- faith seeking to understand. The function of theology is to guide the dialogue between faith and understanding and to prevent either from excluding the other. Significantly new and somewhat unexpected resources for developing these notions are being provided for us in the work of those linguistic analysts who are exploring the meaning of theological explanations.

The happy dilettante, who believes in justification by faith and hope, prays to be judged by his intention as well as by his performance. He is as much concerned with what he can see as needful as with what he himself can provide. If I could choose my own epitaph I would want it to speak of one who was sustained in a rather strenuous career by the vision of a Christian theology that gives history its full due; that makes way for the future without having to murder the past; that begins and ends with the self-manifestation of God’s Mystery in our flesh and our history; that binds itself to Scripture but also claims scriptural authority for a rational hermeneutics; that Opposes human pride and speaks of God’s healing grace without despising or exalting the creature; that unites justice and mercy without resorting either to legalism or to antinomianism; that organizes the Christian life by the power of grace and the means of grace; that celebrates our redemption by the invincible love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord - in sum, a theology that does justice to the reality it reflects upon. It is enough for any man to believe that he has been called to labor in some such task as this, for he cannot doubt that whether it is given him to plant, to water or to harvest, God will give the increase.

The Conference at Stockholm

"Christianity is the name of a number of different religions," says the cynic. And indeed there are times when the differences between the groups within the Christian Church seem quite as great as those which divide the groups outside. There are men who believe that Christianity is an immutable body of absolute truth. There are those who believe that Christianity is a growing and evolving organism. There are men who believe that Christianity is essentially a mystic fellowship of the soul with God. There are those who believe that Christianity is essentially a productive social passion. There are those who believe that Christianity is a lovely ritual, an organism of sacraments, the essential and perfect vehicle of the divine grace. There are those who believe that Christianity is essentially a voice, a flashing of inspired thought from mind to mind, a perpetuation of the fire of prophecy. Can these and all the others meet in some deep and understanding unity of spirit? Can the contradictions be forgotten in the presence of the living Lord? Can the many religious groups stand together as one religion in the face of the need of the world? The reply to all these questions is that in a measure at least all of these things have been done in this year of grace 1925 at the beautiful city of Stockholm, when seven hundred delegates from all about the world met to consider the problems of life and work which confront the Christian Church.

It was a gathering full of the pageantry which captures the eye. The stately processional in the cathedral, the brilliant reception by the king and the queen in the royal palace, the fairly glittering banquet when about twenty-five hundred people were guests of the city of Stockholm in the magnificent town hall -- these and many another event gave a kind of purple richness to the conference. All that grace and dignity and graciousness could do to give the gathering a noble setting was done by the king, the people and the city. It was rather remarkable to see the crown prince at almost every session of the conference listening intently to all the addresses. The patriarchs from oriental churches gave a touch of remote and baffling color to the scene. And as the days wore on they seemed more and more at home with their brethren of the West. The requiem service in memory of the Russian patriarch Tikhon was a grave and memorable ritual set all about words of wise and gracious appreciation of a brave spirit.

The three languages used were English, French and German. In the case of many of the addresses copies in two of these languages were scattered through the assembly while the speaker used the third. In other cases a translator gave a brief summary. It was all done with great skill, and the daily paper Life and Work kept the delegates in close contact with every detail of the program. Reports of commissions which had been considering the great themes of the conference were ready for the perusal of all.

If you looked out from the speakers’ platform, to the right sat a group of Germans. At the front were the Orientals. Back of them from right to left were the Americans and the British, and to the far left the French and other Europeans. The galleries held spectators whose forms, leaning forward, would indicate moments of tense interest and dramatic quality.

Such moments indeed there were. To be sure, matters of Faith and Order were carefully ruled out, but every question regarding the practical application of Christianity came in for frank and free discussion. And there was no attempt to disguise those disagreements which emerged as the discussions wore on. God’s purposes for the world, economic and industrial problems, social and moral problems, international relations, Christian education and plans and methods of co-operation were all discussed from almost every conceivable point of view. At the king’s formal opening of the conference in the royal palace there was a hint of the fashion in which varied attitudes were meeting. His Majesty in a few wise and thoughtful words had opened the assembly. The patriarch and pope of Alexandria in a brief address in graceful French quoted the apostle Peter as placing the king in the world "first after God" (la première place après Dieu). It was rather a relief when Dr. Brown followed with words of appreciation for "Your Majesty’s welcome on behalf of the people of Sweden." No finer act of courtesy characterized the whole gathering than the sentence in the Lord Bishop of Winchester’s address to the king: "We represent the free churches, the Presbyterian churches and the Anglican communion both in Britain and in the various parts of our empire." That placing of the free churches first by an Anglican prelate will not be forgotten. And here it must be said that the opening sermon by the Bishop of Winchester in the cathedral was a noble and fearless call for that deep and fruitful change of mind which would enable the church to face its responsibilities in the world.

From the first address by "Seine Magnifizenz der Landesbischof von Sachsen" (Dr. Ihmels) it was evident that the German delegation represented what to the Anglo-Saxon groups was a strange and baffling point of view. There was moral vigor and spiritual depth, and often the very greatest intellectual subtlety and dialectical ability in these German addresses. But the sense of social Christianity as men have dreamed of it and worked for it in England and America since the days of Maurice and Kingsley, of Josiah Strong and Walter Rauschenbusch was entirely absent. It was as if the original inwardness of the Lutheran position, driven to even profounder depths by the pain and passion and tragedy following the war, had become the defining element of the Christian faith to these men and women. They could speak with astounding insight of the life within. They stood with what seemed at times a bitterly cynical anger in the presence of the sanctions of an interpretation essentially social. That the sword had deeply entered their souls was evident enough. Even when a gallant Frenchman with a gift for the sort of passionate oratory which reaches the heart stretched his hands toward the German group and cried, "We want to love you," there was not a movement of applause from the Teutonic section. Now and then a flaming word torn from the heart of some German speaker revealed the intenseness of his loyalty to the lost cause, and one began to understand a little the temper which in extreme cases believes that the whole matter of the rights and wrongs of the war must yet be investigated but that only Germans possess the scientific qualities of mind necessary for an adequate investigation.

That there was a minority in the German delegation we learned to be true, but the delegation always acted as a unit and the minority did not find a voice. But the spiritual temper of the conference was such that it was not anger which this group aroused. Even the one tense moment, when a speaker authoritatively stated that if certain things were done the German delegation must leave the conference, passed safely. The psychology of a defeated nation is always a tale of sad and baffled inward turning, and the conference never forgot that these men and women, so many of them with somber faces and all of them with such sad and bitter and baffled thoughts, were brothers and sisters who must receive the fullest consideration, the most gracious and understanding sympathy. Perhaps some members of the English group went farthest in the attempt to enter into the very meaning of the experience of the German group. And in individual cases there resulted a deep and hearty fellowship full of promise for the future.

The French group was characterized by a bright and winged clarity of speech. There was often a sympathy for groups outside the immediate circle of organized Christianity which expressed itself with an almost lyric eagerness. Oratory of a very high and authentic quality characterized some of the French utterances. But all the while in the background there was a lurking fear, a sense of the need of "security," a sense of living where earthquakes shake the ground, which made one feel how full of danger is a future built upon the life of peoples in whose hearts anxious suspicion dwells. One evening at Skansen a distinguished member of the French delegation dined with a little group of us. As we looked out over the water with the fascination of gay bright lights playing upon our eyes, he talked with complete and disarming frankness. He admitted the presence of a military group in France. It was evident that with his simple and sincere purpose of good will this was a party to be repudiated. But all the while we felt that the word "security" was a deep and abiding watchword with him. World-wide good will? Yes, surely. But first of all security for torn and bleeding France. One went back to the great conference thinking deep and serious thoughts. How can these suspicions be quieted? How can peace really be brought to the minds and hearts of men?

The British group carried itself with great urbanity. There was constant intercourse between its leaders and members of the American group. It became clear that the great debt which the British are facing so heroically was weighing most heavily upon the men who were so ready to meet as intimate friends their American associates. Perhaps it would be putting the matter too strongly to say that there was an unexpressed bitterness. But one did come to the end of long and intimate conversations with the feeling that there are matters of fact which need most careful consideration as we come to the heartiest understanding with our British friends. Once and again the statement was made, in groups which were discussing these matters informally, that the whole amount borrowed by Britain from the United States had been used not by Britain but by her allies, so that the debt under which she is staggering is entirely a debt incurred for other nations. If my memory serves me, this is essentially the statement made by Lord Balfour a little while ago and almost summarily contradicted by a high official at Washington. It ought not to be too hard to get at the facts, and no one would welcome them, in whichever direction they weigh, more than our British friends.

Of course all this is incidental in respect of the larger matter that no British Christian leader really understands the aloofness of the United States in an hour when the world is staggering under an almost unbearable burden, and when the matter is put in this fashion the memory that Britain adopted just such an attitude of aloofness after the Napoleonic wars does not really constitute a defense of our position. Whatever can be said from the standpoint of the give-and-take of cool and cynical diplomacy, it can scarcely be urged that at this point we are on Christian ground. But these things cannot be said in any deep way to have interfered with the fellowship of British and American delegates. No end of the most intimate sort of friendships cross lines which separate the English-speaking peoples. Personally I was never happier at Stockholm than when off for a walk with some English friend, and the very proof of the depth and reality of the friendship was that it stood the test of the frankest sort of talk.

In the conference itself differences of position between the groups of delegates of various communions and nations came to sharp expression, oddly enough first in respect of the matter of birth control. It was an American who in a keen and passionate address threw down the gauntlet in favor of this reform. And there was something strangely naïve about the reply of the lady from Germany who with obvious and hearty sincerity declared that girls should be brought up to think of bringing children into the world with joyous anticipation and to trust the good Lord for the future of the children when they had come. It is to be feared that the wife of a drunkard looking forward to another arrival in a home already bitterly pinched by poverty would not find much comfort in these glowing words.

The second matter of open difference had to do with prohibition. And here one must refer to the strange and difficult address of Lord Salveson. As a distinguished jurist, as a representative of that British fair play which is colloquially expressed in the splendid word "cricket," one felt that one had a right to expect not only the frank and honest expression of the attitude of a man who did not believe in prohibition, but a certain noble courtesy toward those whose position he was attacking, and a certain special care not to misstate their attitude or any matters with respect to their action. Very reluctantly one is driven to say that his address was an expression of temperament rather than the statement of a poised and careful mind, and that his misstatements in respect of matters of fact were particularly baffling in a man who holds the high and demanding position of a judge. It is not strange that a group of Americans issued a protest not against his lordship’s position but in respect of the misstatements which his address contained.

In respect of the matter of the attitude of the church toward war there was of course a deep and honest difference of opinion. And there was a clear and unhesitating expression of this difference. The hatred of war was definite and perhaps one may say universal. But opinion varied from the absolutist position to the view that war is a necessity in the present situation in the life of the world. The very discussion, however, cleared the air and the net result was surely to give propulsion to all those forces set in battle array against war itself.

The really remarkable thing about the conference was just that with these and other differences of opinion fellowship was never broken. The message sent out at last was inevitably a sort of "common for all" which by no means reflects the moral and spiritual altitudes reached by the conference. The message represents a point from which we will move forward. The noblest individual utterances represent the heights to which we must climb.

The sense of the underprivileged, of the lot of the poor, of the need of social and economic readjustment, of the yeast moving with insurgent power in the life of youth, of the physical basis for full living in adequate housing, of the necessity of steady employment and at a wage which leaves a margin for recreation and culture, the sense of the world as an organism and the commanding hope of humanity as a vast fraternity of good will -- a league of friendly minds -- moved in and out of the thought of the conference, found a place in its conscience, and at last for many became a shining and alluring ideal to whose realization there must be given a supreme consecration and a passionate loyalty.

Individual men made superb contributions. The Archbishop of Upsala was indefatigable in his labors. Dr. Henry Atkinson embodied the genius of efficient organization and hearty good will. Dr. Adams Brown was a quiet influence making for amity between international groups. Bishop Brent struck a deep chord which vibrated through the whole conference. Principal Garvie was all the while touching varied groups with a kindly intellectual sympathy which had its own secrets of power. Dr. Worth Tippy made his influence felt in a far-reaching way in the consideration of economic problems in committee and before the conference. Pasteur Wilfred Monod put a passionate social and religious sympathy into the very heart of the conference at its beginning. Men like Dr. S. Parkes Cadman and Dean Shailer Mathews made their presence and influence felt in manifold ways. And so one might go on and on.

The informal meeting of groups which crossed the national lines was one of the happiest features of the conference. And the presence of capable and able religious journalists like Mr. Porritt of the Christian World and Dr. Lynch of Christian Work, and of understanding interpreters like Edward Shillito of London, who is to edit the volume which will report the conference, meant an enriching of the life of the gathering as well as a profoundly understanding setting forth of its activities through the religious press.

Of course there were some personal actions which one is sorry to remember. The American who wrote to Stockholm suggesting that he be entertained by the crown prince scarcely represented our best tradition. But altogether the gathering was swept by too large a purpose and too noble a passion for the frequent emergence of these unlovely personal attitudes. Sometimes a moment of lofty intellectual perspective was reached, as when Dr. Carnegie Simpson brought the discipline of a highly articulated mind to the analysis of the meaning of personality. So in informal discussion, in public address and debate, in the work of committee and commission, the delegates met together day after day. And all the while the meaning of a Christendom organized for justice and fraternity, for the piety which enfranchises the individual and liberates society, was unfolding before their eyes. Men at the conference often thought and spoke of Nicaea. It is not impossible that in a millennium and a half men may think and speak of Stockholm.

End Missions Imperialism Now!

The missionary movement has arrived at maturity, and there is urgent need that the churches as well as the missionaries take account of it. It is not that we are wiser than our fathers, but that developments of recent times have revealed the true nature of the forces which play upon the life of man. The church has expended much time and energy and more than once fought battles in the realms of belief and conduct. But all this has taken place within the limits of Christian tradition whose main features have been generally accepted, thus leaving the struggle and dispute to secondary things. But today it is those main features of the Christian faith which find themselves confronted by really challenging forces; it is the fundamental issues that are now joined, and the time has come when Christianity must become aware of its own intrinsic nature and the part it should play in the stress of elemental forces.

Missions shares this struggle with the whole Christian fellowship; but there are certain points at which it is more immediate and concrete for the missionary, and for that reason the consciousness of the church is focused in his efforts. Three such issues have emerged today and demand the mature and responsible thought of the churches: ( 1 ) the relation of Christianity to other religions, (2) the relation of Christianity to the national state and (3) the relation of Christianity to the economic order.

A century ago the missionary went out with a Christian ethic of personal and social life which was so clearly superior to many prevailing practices in non-Christian lands that those practices had to yield. Polygamy, suttee, foot-binding (I wish I could add slavery) and the cruder superstitions were evils which Christian missionaries could assail with full confidence and for which they had the remedy. But alas, today the missionary has to face ethical and intellectual demands for which there is no ready answer. Christianity must work out its strategy while it fights; it must determine its true ends and principles in the midst of struggle. The larger issues are no longer concealed behind lesser ones with only the prophetic eye to see them.

Everybody is aware of a marked change on the part of missionary leaders toward other faiths. This new attitude found expression at the Jerusalem meeting: "We rejoice to think that just because in Jesus Christ the light that lighteth every man shone forth in its full splendor, we find rays of that same light where he is unknown or even is rejected. We welcome every noble quality in non-Christian persons or systems as further proof that the Father, who sent his Son into the world, has nowhere left himself without a witness." There are tremendous implications in this frank statement; we cannot stop with it, but must go on to develop its meanings and applications. Religious bodies are prone to rest their case with verbal formulas, sometimes intentionally ambiguous in meaning, and resist any efforts to carry through to valid interpretations and application of them.

One virtue of the report of the Laymen’s Foreign Missions Inquiry is that it tries to work out explicitly the implications of this statement in both theory and practice. It may have taken the right line or it may not, but in any case it does define a meaning. It is a case of the lay mind versus the professional, the latter seeking a formula which means different things to different groups, as a basis of common action; the former saying that common action now calls for a more precise definition of principles. If anyone should seek to make such a definition authoritative, it would destroy co-operation, but to admit the need and to work with open mind toward it ought to produce far more real and deep-going unity of effort.

At any rate it is now plain that the new rapprochement between diverse religions makes it important that the church find a way to understand and even co-operate with other religious groups and individuals that will not be ambiguous and will preserve due respect for the distinctive things in Christianity. It is not mere politeness that we need, but candor and mutual respect as regards real differences.

The rise of nationalism makes acute the right relation of Christianity to the national estate. The church is confronted with the necessity of finding what that relation is and then seeking to realize it. The Holy Roman Empire and the Protestant theocracies identified Christianity with the state. Until recently the doctrine of the separation of church and state has been a fairly satisfactory one so far as the institutions of politics and religion are concerned. But beneath this formal separation has remained the fact that it is the same people, at least in part, who constitute the citizenship and the church membership. Or, more important still, religion and government both claim supreme authority over the same persons, and the Christian citizen as an individual and in fellowship with other Christians must find the principle for the adjustment of these two authorities.

Now one of the objectives of Christian missions today is the development of an "indigenous" Christianity in each country. As expressed by Kagawa, "We want Jesus Christ to take out his first and second naturalization papers in Japan." Great satisfaction has been found by missionary leaders in the national Christian churches in the orient. Yet Christianity is a universal religion; that is one of the basic reasons for the world-wide mission. Indigenous Japanese Christianity and indigenous Chinese and Indian Christianity, while being expressed in the forms of thought and culture that are Japanese and Chinese and Indian, must be something more; and so it is with American Christianity. What is that "something more," and what does it imply as to tension between the Christian fellowship and the state? An American Christianity that is not consciously something more than American cannot give any help to the younger Christian groups which are being tossed and buffeted by the surge of nationalism in Japan, China and India.

The spread of communism has forced another issue which had already begun to trouble the consciences of sensitive Christians, although we cannot say that the church as a whole has even yet taken any serious account of it. Just now Christianity is in danger of being identified with capitalism in its opposition to communism. When we are told that "communism and Christianity are in actual fact two competing systems offering to reconstruct China . . . they are two antithetic and contrasted systems, either of which will affect the whole political, social and spiritual life of the people," the question at once arises: What are the Christian correlates to the communist economic system and social practice? For communism is not only a faith and a philosophy; it is a detailed system covering all the social and economic arrangements of life. If we seek for the corresponding aspects of a Christian "system," an examination of the practices of Christian people and groups would have to answer in terms of the dominant capitalism, for it is under that system that most Christians live.

It must be said with frankness and finality that such an answer is intolerable. Capitalism is not Christianity. The opposition of Christianity to communism is not unqualified and complete. Christianity has far more affinity for some of the basic principles of communism than for the corresponding principles of capitalism. It is very easy to refute the materialistic philosophy of communism and to oppose its atheism. But a truly Christian judgment will condemn even more severely the practical atheism and materialism of a capitalistic order.

Christianity is not an economic system, but it has a faith and ideal which puts upon any system the demand that it honor rather than exploit human personality, that it operate as a technique to provide for the material well-being of all the people and not for the exploitation of the weak by the strong. We urgently need an interpretation of Christianity that will cut across both capitalism and communism and press for practical embodiment of its own reverence for personality. More important by far than an assault upon the theory of communism is the vigorous working out of Christianity’s criticism of capitalism and the development among Christian people of a Christian judgment and conscience in economics. Tomorrow on the mission field will be a happier day if this is done.

Both churches and mission forces need to see more clearly what they are primarily out to do in the work of missions. Increasingly the various boards are working together, forming common programs and uniting institutions. The list of union schools, hospitals and seminaries is already long and is growing longer. Closer consultation and co-operative planning, partly forced by the economic conditions but really expressing a trend of purpose, are making it possible to speak of a Christian world movement.

Now this does not mean agreement in theology. Such agreement does not exist, and probably never will. The co-operative effort in modern missions is significant precisely because it does bring together in common action groups which hold different doctrinal positions. From the standpoint of such cooperation the only heresy is the denial of the right of others to hold to their beliefs and share in the common task. Those who do share in it have thereby renounced that heresy.

But it does mean that there is agreement of purpose, at least in some major part of the purpose of Christian missions. What that purpose is, it is not hard to determine. Jesus reiterated it, and the life of every truly Christian missionary exhibits it. As man himself is the object of God’s love, so all things are instrumental to the service of man. Even the Sabbath, which epitomizes institutional religion, "was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." Peter’s ardent declaration of love for Jesus was thrice turned toward human service "Feed my sheep." The final criterion of judgment is: "Inasmuch as you did it [or did it not] to these my brethren, you did it [or did it not] to me." And this goes even for those who do not consider themselves his followers. Here is the boldness of the Jerusalem message: "We find rays of that same light where he is unknown or even rejected." The first Epistle of John sounds the same note: "If a man say, I love God and hateth his brother he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen." It is not necessary to multiply instances of the clear expression of this dominant principle of Christianity, but it is important to see clearly its relation to Christian missions.

It means that the central aim and purpose of missions is to serve men. All other things are accessory and instrumental to this end. The church was made for man and not man for the church; doctrine was made for man (and by man) and not man for doctrine; Jesus held himself to be the one who came to minister and not to be ministered to. The great and familiar verse John 3:16 declares the order of things in the mind of God to be the same: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son." The only mission that has a place in the world today is the mission chiefly intent upon serving men. This does not settle questions of method or theology, but it does provide a regulative principle and affirms that all the developments of church order and doctrine, as well as forms of educational and other service, are means and not ends and might be modified or abandoned without giving up the central aim of the Christian mission.

The Christian churches and missions, by adopting such an objective, will thereby renounce all exploitation of the peoples of the world in the interests of a religious system, church or doctrine and completely free themselves from the charge of religious imperialism. Such a purpose is really the unifying agreement which has been drawing together the various denominational groups; it now needs to be clearly held and announced, and the churches should throw their full and enthusiastic support back of the programs which seek to embody it.

Maturity of the missionary movement calls for an adult mind on the part of the churches in their attitude toward missionary work and results. If the indigenous church in each land means anything it means that there are likely to emerge forms and expressions of Christianity which we would not recognize as such. Are we prepared to welcome this? Can we summon devotion and enthusiasm for a sowing of the seed of Christian faith and life in other lands which does not guarantee a fruitage of doctrine, forms of worship and practical outworkings like our own? It is such a challenge that is given to our Christianity today. We must mean deeply what we say about indigenous Christianity and have a faith in the inherent power of the spirit of Christ and in the people of other lands that will prompt the most hearty support of a movement which will, when it becomes fully autonomous, produce new and differing results.

And it also means that we must throw away the time schedule. It will take centuries, not decades, to get the Christian gospel deeply into the mind and heart of China and India and Japan, as well as Africa and other parts of the world. The kind of results we want are not going to come until that gospel has found its way into the deepest springs of thought and action and has had time to grow its own forms of conscience and culture, a process which is by no means complete in our own country. We must stop asking for statistical proofs that the Christian mission is succeeding and even be a little suspicious of such proofs. We must be neither too much elated by apparent success nor depressed by apparent failure, but steadfastly seek the clearest line of human service in the spirit of Christ and the most sincere testimony to Christ himself and leave it to God to give the increase.

The Menace of the New Paganism

The adversary who is challenging Christianity today is a rival religion -- a single rival religion. True, this anti-Christian faith is coming into action under different names in different parts of the world; but the more these alternative versions of the postwar paganism insist upon their points of difference -- the more they abuse and attack one another -- the more clearly they betray their kinship with one another to the eyes of the Christian observer. And this element in each of them which is common to all of them is just the thing that makes them, all alike, incompatible with Christianity.

Let us begin by looking for a moment at the success which, in their own spheres, these new faiths achieve. Fascism and communism can dare to ask, and can be fairly sure of receiving, from their followers today a response which Christianity now hardly dares to ask, because it cannot longer be sure of its hold upon the people who call themselves Christians. It is by making these large demands on human nature, and not by offering people the license to do as they like and live at their ease, that the postwar paganism has been winning its masses of converts. This means that it is indeed a formidable spiritual force. And we shall not think it any the less formidable when we discover the secret of its success.

I think one can see two reasons for the fascination which the postwar paganism undoubtedly does exert upon the rising generation. It not only appeals, like Christianity, to the impulse toward self-denial and self-sacrifice -- an impulse which can, of course, be enlisted in a bad as well as in a good cause. The postwar paganism also gives its converts directions for their conduct in practical life; and these directions are of the kind which human nature craves for: they are simple, clear, concrete and confident. A believing Fascist or Communist can probably get more definite instructions than a believing Christian about how he is to behave here and now: whom to love, whom (in his case) to hate, what to fight for, what to worship. On a long view, this extreme concreteness may turn out to be one of the weak points of this paganism; but on a short view its plain answers to plain questions are a tower of strength. And on any view this exaggeration of what is surely a virtue in itself makes the postwar paganism an adversary which has to be taken very seriously by Christianity.

In its own estimation, this postwar paganism is indeed nothing less than Christianity’s supplanter and successor. "Christianity," say the Fascist and Communist missionaries, "is an old religion which has had its chance and has failed to make use of it." Christianity, they say, has been in the world for ages and has not succeeded in making any appreciable difference to human life. If the spirit and teaching and practice of Christianity were really the way of salvation, they would surely have saved the world by this time. So today, they tell us, Christianity stands condemned by the verdict of history. It is, therefore, high time for Christianity to retire from the stage and yield the floor to a new religion which claims to have a better understanding of human nature, and believes for that reason that it can produce results where Christianity has nothing more substantial to its credit than a scrap-heap of unfulfilled and unfulfillable ideals. "Fascism and communism," say their preachers, "stand for pagan performance as opposed to Christian promise; they stand for deeds in place of dreams."

This attack on Christianity is made by the postwar pagans in good faith. It is just this belief in their own program that is their strength. Yet this overweening pagan claim calls down upon itself a shattering Christian answer. The answer can be put in three points. In the first place, the really new thing in the world is not paganism but Christianity. In the second place, if there are any new features in the postwar paganism, they are features which this paganism has borrowed from Christianity. In the third place, the core of the postwar paganism, under its Christian varnish, is something as old as the hills -- an ancient error which Christianity has fought and conquered not once but many times already. Let me try to put each of these points to you very briefly.

First, Christianity is not old but young. In thinking of Christianity as old, our modern pagans are unconsciously looking at history in the short perspective of a prescientific age. If you bear in mind the fact that the human race has been in existence not for mere thousands but for hundreds of thousands of years, and then think of the life of mankind on earth up to date in terms of the life of a single human being, you will see that 37 A.D. is no farther off from 1937 A.D. than yesterday is from today in your life or in mine. And in this really very brief period of less than two thousand years Christianity has in fact produced greater spiritual effects in the world than have been produced in a comparable space of time by any other spiritual movement that we know of in history.

Christianity promises to inspire men and women to lead a new life and to teach them how to do it, and this promise has already been fulfilled in the lives of the saints. These lives are an earnest of a life that may be lived one day by all the members of the church on earth, for sainthood is not some half-legendary grace of the early church which died out within a few centuries of the church’s foundation. It is a spiritual power in Christianity which has broken out again and again wherever and whenever the church has been challenged by the world, as it is being challenged today. There was an outbreak of sainthood in sixteenth-century Italy in answer to the challenge of the Renaissance, and another in nineteenth-century France in answer to the challenge of the Revolution. And if Christianity rises to the present challenge from the postwar paganism, the appearance on earth of another batch of saints will no doubt be one of the practical concrete ways in which the church will be given the strength to deal with its present adversary.

The second point in our Christian reply to the pretensions of the paganism of today was, you will remember, that, so far as one can find anything new in the twentieth-century paganism, this new thing is something that has been borrowed by paganism from Christianity itself. I do see one new thing in this latter-day paganism which is, I am certain, of Christian origin, and that is its wholeheartedness. Christianity has put into the spiritual life of man on earth an intensity which was never given to it by any older religion -- not even by Zoroastrianism and Judaism, which were Christianity’s two forerunners. Christianity has done this by giving us a new insight into God’s purpose in the world, and into man’s part in that purpose -- an insight which shows us the immensity of the importance of our conduct here and now. Christianity places our conduct in this life on earth in its gigantic setting of infinity and eternity, and by opening our eyes to this vast spiritual vision it calls out our deepest spiritual energies.

Now I fancy that the present post-Christian form of paganism has succeeded to some extent in "stealing the thunder" of Christianity (to borrow a phrase from the vocabulary of primitive religion). This post-Christian paganism has succeeded in capturing, for its own trivial and narrow ends, some of that wholehearted Christian devotion which ought to be given to God alone. And if this has really happened it should be taken deeply to heart by Christians for two reasons. For one thing, this pagan practice of a Christian virtue shows up the lukewarmness and indecisiveness which have paralyzed so much of the Christianity of the modern age, for if the church had remained true to herself she would not have seen her children transferring their allegiance elsewhere and laying their Christian spirit of devotion at the feet of false gods. And then, again, there is nothing so dangerous and so destructive as a wholehearted devotion that has been diverted from the service of God to the service of some lower object. The spiritual driving-force drawn from Christianity has given the new paganism a daemonic power which the old paganism never wielded, and this power is -- let us frankly admit it -- tremendously formidable. If Christianity is to conquer a paganism that has been allowed to equip itself with the church’s own weapons, the church will have perhaps greater need of God’s grace than it has ever had before.

And now I come to the last of my three points. That is that, apart from the new Christian intensity with which our postwar paganism has managed to arm itself, this paganism which is challenging Christianity once more today is not a new thing in the world, as Christianity itself is, but, on the contrary, is something very old -- as old, perhaps, as human nature. Our postwar paganism is, in fact, in one form or another, simply the idolatry which used to hold the field in the ages before Christianity appeared in the world, and which Christianity has always been struggling to weed out of people’s hearts. In speaking of fascism and communism as idolatry, I am not just hurling a term of abuse at them. By "idolatry" I mean something which is, I think, quite definite and clear, and which is also, I think, written large on the face of both these two latter-day pagan movements. By "idolatry" I mean a religion which either does not know, or else refuses to recognize, that there is no god but God, and which therefore worships the creature instead of worshipping the creator.

As the works of God’s creation are infinite, idolatry has taken a great variety of forms. One form is the worship of organized human power. This organization of power may be local and sectional, or again it may attempt to embrace the whole of mankind; and either the local tribe or humanity at large may be, and has been, erected into an object of idolatrous worship. Each of these two ancient idols has now been set up on its pedestal again by the new paganism. The tribe is the idol of fascism; humanity is the idol of communism.

The high priests of tribalism preach to their devotees that the whole duty of man is comprised in the service of the local tribe into which a man happens to have been born. The tribesman’s tribe is to be the tribesman’s god. This tribal god is to have an exclusive claim upon the tribesman’s allegiance and devotion. And this idolatrous worship necessarily debars the tribe-worshiper both from worshipping the one true God and from being his own human brother’s keeper outside this one tribe’s narrow limits. This tribe-worshipping form of idolatry is the religion of Ishmael, whose "hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him." It was also the religion of Sparta, and of the other city states of ancient Greece with whom the Spartans were perpetually at war. And these ancient city states came to the bad end which in our day is threatening to overtake the national states into which Christendom has broken up in modern times. Sparta and the rest of them met the fate of the Kilkenny cats. They fought each other to extinction, and on their ruins was established that Roman Empire which became an object of idolatrous worship in its turn.

In the Roman Empire, a generation which had become disillusioned with tribe-worship found a new idol which, in contrast to Sparta and Athens, stood for the whole of mankind, and not just for one section of it.

The idolatrous worship of organized human power is the fatal error which is common to all the varieties of our postwar paganism. The error is so profound that the triumph of this paganism could spell nothing but disaster for mankind. But to say that human society is not a proper object for religious worship does not, of course, mean that the tribe or the state or the nation or the world empire are evil in themselves. No doubt they have their place in human life, since man has been created as a social creature. But the function of these manmade social organizations is certainly not to usurp the throne of God. Their function -- and it is an honorable though a humble one -- is to serve as stepping-stones on the way toward the only society in which man can find a true satisfaction for his social nature; that is, a society which, so far from usurping the place of God, has God himself for its principal member. The true home of man is the Civitas Dei, the "City of God" in which the common fatherhood of God creates a brotherhood between all the human citizens of the divine commonwealth -- a brotherhood which cannot be established by any bond of which God himself is not the maker.