Articles – Page 222 – Religion Online

Colombia’s War: Drugs, Oil and Markets

In the name of the "war on drugs" much of Colombia is being subjected to terror in the form of massacres, assassinations, rapes and the spraying of poison from airplanes. When in August 2000 Congress approved President Bill Clinton’s request for $1.3 billion to implement "Plan Colombia," the faith-based organization Witness for Peace decided to send a delegation of 100 people to see for themselves what was happening there, and I signed on. We feared that U.S. involvement would add to the violence in an already war-ravaged land, would create a situation similar to that of El Salvador in the 1980s or even lead to a debacle like our involvement in Vietnam. The trip confirmed these fears -- and more.

Plan Colombia, which President George W. Bush renamed the Andean Regional Initiative, is being sold as a key component of the war on drugs. The propaganda for it is so effective that even critics of U.S. policy in Colombia assume it is true. For example, NBC’s August 31 Dateline devoted a full hour to a skeptical look at what the U.S. is doing in Colombia. The program’s host, Geraldo Rivera, suggested that it will be impossible to stop the flow of drugs as long as demand for them is so high in the U.S. and warned of the danger that we might be drawn into a civil war. Though both points are important and valid, the program was notable for what it did not say.

Rightly calling attention to the extremely high level of violence in Colombia, Rivera failed to mention the group responsible for 70 percent of that violence: the paramilitary forces which, although ostensibly private and illegal, receive aid and cooperation from Colombia’s army and hence, indirectly, from the U.S. Neither did Rivera mention the 2 million people who have fled from the fighting and the aerial fumigation of their farms.

These internal refugees, unemployed, living in squatters’ communities in the cities to which they have fled, are the principal result of the war so far. Many Colombians believe that they are its intended result, that the real aim of the war against insurgents and against drugs is really to get small farmers off their land in order to make room for development. Under Colombia’s coca fields is oil. Paramilitaries terrorize people into leaving their land, and labor organizers are the group most targeted for assassination. More than 1,000 have been killed in the past 12 years, 200 so far this year.

Colombia is a prime instance of U.S. military clout being used to serve the interests of corporate-led globalization. Because the campaign is such bad news for the poor of Colombia (and the rest of South America), and because it increases the level of terror in the world, it should be of great concern to America and its churches -- all the more so since our own experience of terror on September 11.

To understand what is going on in Colombia, one needs to begin by looking at the country’s long history of violence. The Spanish conquest in the early 16th century enslaved Indians to work in mines and on plantations. As a result of the subsequent importation of African slaves Colombia now has the third largest black population in the Americas, after Brazil and the U.S.

The country’s violence has grown out of such endemic social factors as the severe, often brutal, exploitation of labor; the deep poverty of at least 60 percent of its people -- though the land itself is rich in natural resources and the economy is productive; and the political disempowerment of more than 90 percent of its citizens. A small white ruling class controls Colombia’s political life and holds most of its wealth. As a result of huge amounts of military spending, the national debt is massive. This social structure, an extreme form of what characterizes several other parts of Latin America, is such a formula for social unrest that Colombia will experience continuing violence as long as it remains unchanged.

Factionalism within Colombia’s ruling class, moreover, has led to repeated episodes of warfare. Between 1899 and 1902, Conservatives and Liberals fought the savage War of the Thousand Days. Between 1946 and 1958 these factions fought again in an epoch known as La Violencia -- a conflict satirized in Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. A fratricidal orgy that cost an estimated 200,000 lives, La Violencia precipitated the current time of troubles. Outraged that Colombia’s factional wars did nothing to relieve the suffering of the poor, reformers became rebel guerrillas.

Formed toward the end of the 1950s, two of these groups remain active today: the FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces), which draws its primary strength from campesinos in the south, and the ELN (Army of National Liberation), whose strength is greater in the north among oil workers, indigenous groups defending their habitat against encroachment by the oil industry, and the Afro-Colombian population.

The guerrilla activities in turn led to the creation of Colombia’s most deadly force today: the paramilitaries, made up of mercenaries easily recruited with a bit of pay, a uniform and a gun from among Colombia’s desperately poor young people. At first they were financed and used by large landowners to defend their property against guerrilla incursions. Later they were also used by drug lords to protect their illegal activities. More recently they have been employed by the Colombian army to do the dirty work of terrorizing the campesinos and community leaders who are the real focus of the present war.

Not long ago the Colombian army had one the worst records of human rights abuses in the Americas. Recently it appears to have delegated this kind of brutality to the paramilitaries, who commit atrocities on its behalf. U.S. military aid to Colombia indirectly subsidizes the paramilitaries’ acts of terrorism. The human rights officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia’s capital, acknowledged to our delegation the collusion between Colombia’s army and the paramilitaries -- a collusion that is often officially denied. She said that nothing could be done about it. However, on September 10 the U.S. finally blacklisted Colombia’s largest paramilitary group as a terrorist organization, as it had done with the FARC and the ELN much earlier.

To speak of human rights abuses is to speak abstractly. The concrete reality consists of kidnappings, murders, tortures, rapes and massacres. Though all of the armed groups have engaged in some of these things, the paramilitaries are thought to commit about 70 percent of these crimes and appear to be the only group engaged in massacres. They have several times entered villages in broad daylight, forced a number of civilians into an open public space, gunned them down and then cut up the bodies with chain saws, scattering limbs, heads and torsos on the ground as a warning to the living that they will suffer the same fate if they do not flee. One such massacre took place in the department of Cauca during this past Holy Week.

Community leaders are often slain first. Their plight is so desperate and so little noticed outside of Colombia -- that the labor union leaders in Bogotá who met with our delegation welcomed us with the words, "We have been waiting for you for 50 years. Where have you been?"

A major form of violence in Colombia today, the spraying of poison on the farms of campesinos, has greatly escalated since the U.S. instituted Plan Colombia. Crop dusters fly over coca fields with helicopter escorts, spraying Roundup Ultra, a souped-up version of the weed killer popular in the U.S. It is manufactured by Monsanto Chemicals, the firm that made Agent Orange for use in the Vietnam War. Although the principal toxin in regular Roundup is glyphosate, in Colombia something called Cosmo-flux has been added to make it stick to the leaves of the coca plant. The combination is thought to increase the danger to animal and human life. Even the regular formula sold in the U.S. carries a label warning against possible damage to aquatic organisms, pets, grazing animals, rabbits, tortoises, fowl -- and people. The label warns that one must not eat the fruit or nuts of trees that have been in the area sprayed with the chemical for 21 days. But these safety standards are not applied to the aerial spraying in Colombia.

Although the stated objective of the spraying is to kill only coca plants, it is not possible to restrict the damage. The spray can be carried half a mile or more by winds. Because coca is often planted in the same field with food crops, corn, bananas, yucca and beans are killed along with it. Farm animals often die from it, as do fish. Children become sick. On hillsides, the death of plants leads to soil erosion. Since the land is part of the Amazon basin, the ecological consequences are severe. As farmers are driven from their homesteads, many go into the jungle to clear new land for crops, with the result that some 1.75 million acres of rain forest have been lost.

The aerial fumigations are, as one might expect, extremely unpopular. While we were in Colombia the governors of four departments (states) in the south, where the spraying is most intense, flew to Washington to object. Meanwhile, the governor of Caquetá made the same point to our delegation, as did members of a morning-long symposium in which we heard from departmental legislators, nongovernmental organizations, educators and church groups. This past summer, when Colombia’s President Andrés Pastrana, acceding to widespread protest, announced that there would be a halt to the fumigations, he was quickly contradicted by the U.S. Embassy, and the spraying resumed a few days later.

People flee in huge numbers from the fumigations (which are carried out by the army) and from the fighting between guerrillas and paramilitaries. Since the UN reserves the term "refugees" for those who cross national borders, the 2 million Colombians who have been driven from their land and huddle in squatters’ communities are usually spoken of as "displaced persons." We spent two nights in such a settlement, called Nueva Colombia, on the edge of Florencia, the capital of Caquetá. Three of us slept on the floor of a one-room house that a four-person family had built for itself out of planks and corrugated tin. The lucky father of this family had a job, unlike the 90 percent in Nueva Colombia who can find no employment.

This had been a farming family, tilling some 20 acres on which they could sustain themselves with several cows, some food crops and a small amount of coca. When the fields were sprayed the first time, they made a partial recovery; but after the second time they gave up, mostly out of fear for the health of their two small children. They now produce nothing and are completely dependent upon the market economy. Although the father works as night watchman of an office building, he has no job security.

It is important to understand why such farmers grow coca. Its cultivation is traditional in the Andes, where it is used as a mild intoxicant and hallucinogen for social, medicinal and religious purposes. It is, for example, a common remedy for altitude sickness. It has sacramental meaning for the indigenous Andeans, who use it, as some of them told me, "to communicate with our ancestors."

During the 1980s, small farmers saw the market for their food products disappear. As a result of globalization and free-market policies, Colombia became flooded with food imported from the U.S. Deprived of the cash they had earned from their food crops, farmers found a ready, if illegal, market for their coca, which could be sold to traffickers as raw material for cocaine. At the same time, the war on drugs was pushing coca cultivation out of Peru and Bolivia (which are to the south of Colombia), making it an even more attractive cash crop for Colombian farmers. Now, when this crop is destroyed, they have no place to go and no way to live. They are victims of both the corporate and the military arms of globalization.

The international drug trade is itself an example and a beneficiary of economic globalization. It is a serious mistake to assume that the U.S. has a drug problem because coca and poppies are grown in Colombia, or that eliminating these crops from Colombia would stem the flow of drugs into North America and elsewhere. If the drug crops could not be grown in Colombia, they would be grown in Ecuador or in other parts of South America, or perhaps in Africa.

The "war on drugs" is counterproductive, since it raises the price of the drugs, makes drug trafficking more profitable, and thus encourages dealers to try to sell more. Despite the many billions the U.S. has spent on the drug war, consumption in the U.S. has not declined. The Rand Institute has estimated that spending the money on drug treatment programs would be seven times more effective. That our drug policy has failed must be clear to our policymakers in Washington. Why, then, are we pouring so much money into Plan Colombia? The answer lies in the U.S. need for expanding markets and its high consumption of oil.

Beneath the coca fields in southern Colombia lie the largest undeveloped oil deposits in the Americas. Oil is already being piped from fields further north, where paramilitaries have been most active and where the tension is highest between management and labor and between the oil companies and the indigenous population. When Plan Colombia was under consideration by Congress, a vice president of Occidental Petroleum (in which Albert Gore’s family owns stock), who is also a leader of the U.S-Colombia Business Partnership, testified in its favor. One company with large investment in Colombian oil development is Harken Engineering of Houston, Texas, which George W. Bush helped manage when he was in the oil business. While he was governor of Texas, Bush received a visit from President Pastrana encouraging expansion of Harken’s Colombia activity. Well known in Colombia, the oil connection is given little publicity in the U.S.

As farmers are driven off Colombia’s land, it is falling into the hands of speculators. Fewer and fewer people own more and more of the country’s land. There is talk of building a major highway that would cut across southern Colombia to connect Brazil with the Pacific Ocean. Such a highway would radically alter the economy of the region and increase land values. Plans are under way for the completion and improvement of the Pan American Highway running north to south. In the north, there are rumors of the construction of an inter-oceanic canal that could accommodate vessels too large for the Panama Canal. The mining of ore and precious stones is important to Colombia’s future. And agribusinesses are ever eager to supplant traditional farming methods.

In Colombia as throughout the world, small farmers stand in the way of the dreams and schemes of the strong and are considered expendable. The plight of the rural poor constitutes a crisis rapidly being made worse by corporate-led globalization, which offers significant benefit to only about 20 percent of the world’s population. The resistance this creates induces the mighty to quash it by force, as activities in Colombia clearly demonstrate.

At Colombia’s Larandia military base in Caquetá, our delegation interviewed the commanding officer of an anti-narcotics brigade, who was accompanied by two other officers. He told us that he and one of the others had been trained at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Many in our delegation had participated in protests at the gates of Fort Benning aimed at closing the school, and some had served prison sentences for doing so. The school is notorious for its "counterterrorism" instruction, which means the training of Latin American armies to make war upon their own people. Over the years, some 10,000 Colombian officers have been trained there, more than from any other country. U.S. military involvement with Colombia began well before the drug war.

At the Larandia base we also saw U.S-made helicopters and U.S. officers engaged in the supervision and training of antinarcotics battalions. These units are also used to fight insurgents. To help them, the U.S. has 500 military personnel stationed in Colombia, plus 300 people performing military tasks out of uniform and under contract to the Pentagon and/or the CIA. The latter are part of a policy to "outsource" or privatize certain jobs normally done by uniformed personnel.

The DynCorp company of Reston, Virginia, is one of several firms supplying personnel to this endeavor, usually men who have retired from the armed services. Such people made up the crew of the reconnaissance plane that last April fed information to the Peruvian fighter plane that shot down a family of missionaries. The use of such mercenaries makes it easier to fool Congress and the public about the nature and extent of U.S. military operations abroad. It also avoids the bringing home of bodies in flag-draped coffins.

Seeking to prevent another Vietnam, Congress put a cap on the number of U.S. personnel that could be assigned to military duty in Colombia, limiting the number to no more than 500 in uniform, plus 300 civilians. When President Bush asked Congress last summer for an additional $800 million for the Andean Regional Initiative, he requested that the personnel limit be removed. Although Congress refused, it is likely that the request will be made again and again until Congress gives in, or perhaps, as with the Iran-contra case, a way will be found to circumvent the law

As the term "Andean Regional Initiative" signals, Colombia is only one part of U.S. plans for a military buildup in South America. Already the U.S. air base in Ecuador is being expanded. Ecuador, many suspect, is being set up to function in South America as Honduras did in Central America in the 1980s -- as a place from which U.S. military involvement in other countries of the region can be coordinated.

Legislators, educators, labor leaders and church groups in Colombia spoke repeatedly of the recolonization and the dollarization of Colombia. Some spoke also of U.S. military dominance of their country and their continent. Under the twin banners of a globalized economy and a war against drugs, the U.S. is pursuing the aim of controlling the political, military and economic life of all the Americas. The course we are taking there is not good news for the poor.

The Play that Carries a Plague

Oberammergau, July 27, 1960

P. T. Barnum, who reputedly said that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool some of the people some of the time, would have admired Oberammergau. The gullibility of the general public is always great, but when the credulity of the religious is added it becomes immense. The Passion Play at Oberammergau is surely one of the biggest pieces of folderol ever palmed off on the innocent masses.

Masses they are. A million requests for seats were received; half had to be refused. Whether the masses are innocent is, of course, not a matter that can be documented, but I have observed in conversation with many spectators tenacious conviction that the Passion Play is (a) a great work of religious art or (b) the work of sincere peasant folk bent only on fulfilling an ancient vow. To the spectator who comes with eyes accustomed to the ways of the world, it is neither. If some hold that the play is not for such eyes but for the eyes of faith, I reply that in matters of religious art, as in other matters, we have the injunction to be harmless as doves but wise as serpents. The village of Oberammergau itself is not lacking in the wisdom of the world.

The first criteria to be applied to the play are those of theatrical art. These criteria cannot be excluded by the argument that the play is a piece of folk craft for which the criteria of formal art are irrelevant. After all, the play is advertised throughout the world and thousands of people pay enormous sums of money to come and see it. It is a profit-making venture not only for the village but for the several travel agencies that hold a monopoly on the tickets and for countless other agencies which profit from it indirectly. These tangible benefits and the organized publicity that produces them cannot be reconciled with claims put forward in behalf of folk art.

Moreover, the form of presentation of the play has changed many times since the vow to perform it every ten years was taken in the seventeenth century. The present text dates only from 1860. The costumes and scenery have been altered frequently, as has the theater itself, which now accommodates some 6,000 spectators. Many elements from the professional theater have entered. The actors are indeed amateurs, but the officials are anything but simple peasant folk; they go about their work with great self-consciousness. There is therefore no question but that the play must be judged according to the same standards as any other work offered to the general public in a commercial theater.

The criteria applied to any work of theater art are these: Does it have vitality? Is it faithful to some respectable idea of reality? Are the artisans in control of their medium? Does it exhibit good taste? On any or all of these counts the Passion Play at Oberammergau falls down miserably. Its lugubrious, plodding manner kills all vitality, except perhaps for a few moments in some of the Judas scenes. Imagine a play lasting over seven hours with no humor and no irony, and you have a notion of how much vitality this work possesses. As for reality, I think it safe to say there is hardly a moment of truth in it. I do not refer at this point to theological truth, but to the ways by which art represents the truth of life.

What can it mean, after all, to see Jesus and the disciples wearing pastel gowns and gloomy looks, climbing over cardboard rocks beside painted two-dimensional trees in front of a blue canvas sky that trembles in the wind? How can it move us to be told that Jesus gave his body as a feast "truly from heaven come down," and then to be treated to a tableau vivant showing the children of Israel in the desert, in the style, colors and postures of bad Sunday school illustrations, with manna falling from the sky in the form of bits of fluttering paper? The twenty tableaux vivants are atrocious beyond my power to describe; they are all scenes from the Old Testament and Apocrypha, linked by dubious typology to incidents in the Passion of Christ. For instance, when the chorus tells us that Judaism has been rejected by God in favor of the Christian community, we are shown a mournful picture of "Vashti rejected and Esther chosen Queen."

The chorus, on stage a great deal of the time, is unbelievably stilted. Its forty-eight singers plus a leader called the "Prologue" plod in single file from the two sides of the stage like so many resigned workhorses. Never once in seven-and-a-half hours did any one of the forty-nine smile; they obviously enjoyed it as little as did I. The crowd scenes are from the worst Hollywood tradition -- the participants not untrained, but trained in a manner that suggests the lavishness of the production more than the reality of the historical moment. The individual performances I saw were not too bad for amateurs, especially that by the Judas; but the Christ was wooden when not irate. The crucifixion scene was real at two points: where the cross was raised and Jesus groaned from the pain of his own sagging weight, and when his side was pierced and blood flowed from the wound. But two or three credible moments cannot redeem a performance that lasts all day. The music, which might be described as inferior Mozart, was not bad, though it had nothing whatever in common with the script and the staging. Let’s face it: the Oberammergau play is Kitsch.

My bristling thoughts about the lack of quality and integrity in the Oberammergau Passion Play were softened somewhat by words I found in the official guide to the play which indicate that the village itself is not devoid of agitation for reform. In an article entitled "Some Notes on the Question of a New Version of the Text," Dr. Alois Fink expresses the argument clearly and with pertinent attention to the central point:

The greatness and inviolability of a subject have never yet exempted those who endeavor to find expression for it from the effort of giving their very best from the artistic point of view; and to fail to fulfill this demand when a religious subject of such a sublime nature as the story of Our Lord is involved, is not merely an aesthetic sin. There is every danger of a piously suppressed smile at artistic faults in the performance of the text engendering doubts of the true religious feeling and faith of the actors, danger also of misinterpretation of the . . . motives of the community in performing the Play.

It must be said to the people of Oberammergau that this danger has become a reality, and that the play as it is now performed is not merely worthless but positively harmful to the curious and the faithful who journey to see it.

As for the motives of the actors and the community, it is admittedly dangerous to speculate. But there are many disturbing signs over and above the falsity and ineptness of the play itself. The commercialization of the village has often been remarked upon. It is perhaps as natural as it is disturbing. It would not be disturbing, of course, if there were not so many protestations about the religious intentions of the villagers. Even more serious, however, is the question of the sale of tickets and accommodations. These are made available by the Oberammergau authorities only to certain travel agencies. I have first-hand knowledge that at least one agency with which Oberammergau co-operates has been misrepresenting to its customers the so-called "hotel" space it has for sale, and has been engaged in other unethical practices. There has been a notorious black market in Oberammergau tickets.

The authorities in the village are naturally quite eager to dissociate themselves from all such practices, but if they are to be successful in doing so they will have to adopt firmer policies. Since they have absolute control over the supply of tickets and since they deal only with their own selected list of agencies, it would seem to be within their power to correct the abuses now prevalent. If they do not do so, the character of the enterprise will be blackened by the cloud of suspicion now gathering.

This year the Oberammergau Passion Play has been the object of much controversy arising from allegations that it is anti-Semitic. The discussion was triggered by an article by Robert Gorham Davis in the March 1960 issue of Commentary. In Germany the discussion was intensified by the fact that the opening of the play coincided with a meeting of the Society for Christian-Jewish Co-operation, which issued statements criticizing the play and suggested that a committee consisting of a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew be formed to advise on revisions of the text.

I inquired in the village for someone who could tell me about the official reaction to this controversy and was referred to Karl Bauer, director of the Office of Arrangements. I obtained an interview with Herr Bauer. He informed me that Professor Davis’ article had been read in the village, but that there had been no particular reaction to it other than regret at its publication, since its charges of anti-Semitism were patently false. He said that since the play was written by monks in a seventeenth-century monastery, it was inconceivable that the authors could have harbored anti-Semitic feelings, and he pointed out that the text has not been revised since 1860. As for the suggestion by the Society for Christian-Jewish Co-operation that an interfaith committee advise on revisions, he referred me to a statement by the burgomaster of Oberammergau dated May 13, 1960, which asserted that all matters pertaining to the play are entirely the business of the community of Oberammergau, that the Society for Christian-Jewish Co-operation had overstepped its bounds, and that if revisions became necessary Oberammergau would consult only the church, the poets and the experts in theater practice. The burgomaster pointed out that the play is performed under the protection of the church and the laws of the land.

There is no need for me to restate the points made by Professor Davis; his article may be consulted by anyone interested in the subject. His conclusions are based on examination of the Daisenberger text of 1860, the one now being performed.

After seeing the play and perusing the text, I can only conclude that Professor Davis is right. The play is decidedly anti-Semitic, and its interpretation of the crucifixion and the events leading to it is harmful not only to Christian-Jewish relations but to proper understanding of the Christian gospel.

Two major points are to be made in support of my conclusion. The most important has to do with the structure of the play, which turns the story of the Passion into a melodramatic clash between on the one hand the good Christ and his followers (including by implication the entire Christian Church), and on the other the evil Sanhedrin and its followers. The first action shown is the expulsion of the money-changers from the temple, an act which stirs up the merchants against Christ. They in turn agitate the Sanhedrin to action, and the play proceeds as an unequal struggle between the good guys and the bad guys. Judas’ role is central, and the motivation for his treachery is entirely that of monetary greed.

I see it now, there is nothing in prospect but to live in continual poverty and misery.... I have always been prudent and careful, and, now and then, have laid aside a little for myself out of the general purse, in case of need -- I can use that now until I find other means. I must provide myself for a long time.

Self-preservation, monetary gain and preservation of the status quo -- these are the motivations the play gives for the crucifixion. And they are portrayed as the traits of a particular race; the many ugly scenes in the Sanhedrin make this clear.

The second point has to do with the play’s statements, most of them spoken or sung by the Prologue and chorus, which portray the Jews as a people rejected by God in favor of the Christian community. I cite one passage from among many that might be adduced:

But blind and deaf remains poor Jerusalem,

Thrusting away the hand lovingly held out to her.

Therefore the Highest from her His face hath turned.

So He leaveth her to sink down to destruction.

Queen Vashti once disdaining to attend the royal feast

Enraged thereby the king, who swore to banish her

From his presence and to choose

A gentler soul for his consort.

Thus too will the synagogue be thrust away,

From her will the kingdom of God be taken and entrusted

To another people who shall bring forth

The fruits of righteousness.

One has only to compare these lines with the statements of St. Paul regarding the destiny of the Jews to see that the biblical thought has been drastically reduced in a way that is decidedly prejudicial. The Christian spectators of the play are flattered as members of a "gentler" people, while the Jews are left "to destruction."

It would be a mistake to suppose that the anti-Semitic elements of the Oberammergau Passion Play are the result of nazism. Though the village was the site of an elite Nazi Kaserne and though many of the villagers were members of the party, there seems to be no evidence that Nazi sentiments led to any changes in the text. What is present is something older and deeper than nazism -- a Bavarian if not a German racial consciousness supported by a conservative religious culture. The pity is that the Bavarian seems hardly able to distinguish between his religious feelings, his anti-Jewish prejudices, and his racial and cultural pride. This is why he is but little affected by charges that he is anti-Semitic.

As a matter of fact, the ability to recognize anti-Semitism as such is chiefly a modern capacity fostered by democratic ideals and sharpened by the reaction of civilized consciences to the racial atrocities of nazism. For this reason we probably ought to distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish thought -- the former being that modern phenomenon all democratic persons are eager to combat; the latter the expressions of hostility or dislike found in earlier periods as a result of the specific religious and historical role the Jews and their antagonists have played. Thus Egypt and Assyria in Old Testament times were anti-Jewish or anti-Hebrew, though it would be foolish to call them anti-Semitic. The Arabs today are not anti-Semitic, since they are Semites themselves. What nazism did was to turn the anti-Jewish feelings of the German people into anti-Semitism. The same phenomenon occurs in other Christian countries on a less systematically organized basis. What Oberammergau should realize, but probably will not, is that its anti-Jewish play today serves to propagate anti-Semitism, a modern disease as loathsome as the seventeenth-century plague which struck such fear into the hearts of the Oberammergau forefathers. Delivered from one plague, they have, unwittingly or not, become the carriers of another.

I have said that the play leads to misinterpretation of the Christian gospel. It is sometimes argued that the play is no more anti-Jewish than the New Testament itself. It might be fairly held that the play is no more anti-Jewish than certain passages of the New Testament, but the point is that the play distorts the New Testament story of the Passion primarily by selection and emphasis. I have already referred to the way in which Paul’s discussion of the destiny of the Jews is reduced and thus misrepresented. There are numerous anti-Jewish references in the Gospel of John, but that is the only one of the four Gospels that has them. Moreover, none of the four Gospels tells the story of the Passion in such a way as to make it a simple tale of injustice done by the bad Sanhedrin to the good Christians.

The intent of the Gospels is to show that Christ was crucified by mankind, as he is crucified daily by our sins. When the story is made to flatter the Christian Church at the expense of the Jews (or when, as in the play, Pilate, a non-Jew, is made to appear noble in contrast to the scheming Sanhedrin) the true import of the Christian gospel is corrupted. That the Roman Catholic Church blesses such a representation and that Protestants, beguiled by romantic publicity, countenance it is evidence of a shocking weakness in religious and moral sensitivity.

My travels this summer have taken me now to three large festival plays in which the crucifixion of Christ is portrayed: the York Mystery Plays in England, the Passion Play at Tegelen in Holland and the Oberammergau Play in Germany. The plays at York and Tegelen are not subject to the anti-Semitic charges one must level at Oberammergau. Nevertheless, these plays have convinced me that when the crucifixion story is played out by amateurs for mass audiences distortions of one kind or another are inevitable. The playing of the Passion as a spectacle for vast audiences is in itself an offense, since it leads to detachment. The plays tend to become big shows more or less in the manner of De Mille. Even a sensitive director like David Giles at York is impelled in that direction by the nature of his play and the size of his audience.

If religious drama is to be judged by this sort of activity, it has patently already failed. We must move away from the big spectacle or pageant easily understood. We must move toward the subtleties of thought and nuances of feeling that belong to authentic art and which alone are capable of expressing the inner qualities of religious faith.

Beginning at Jerusalem

No one could have attended the meeting of the International Missionary Council at Jerusalem during the two weeks ending on Easter Day without discerning that momentous changes are taking place in foreign missions. To one whose eyes are riveted on the past or even on the present these changes may seem confusing; to one who looks down the future they must appear to be fraught with the richest promise. For him ceaseless change is no occasion for alarm but an evidence of vitality. Misgiving would rather be in order if missions remained static, uninfluenced by the new currents of life and thought that are flowing through the world.

For one thing, the Jerusalem meeting made it clear that the missionary enterprise is coming to be not something that we do for other peoples but something that we do with them. Gone was the note of condescending superiority.

As one sat day by day with great personalities from China, Japan, India, Africa, South America and other quarters of the earth, one realized that the final meaning of the missionary movement is the development of a world-wide fellowship in which every race will make its own indispensable contribution to the building of a Christian world. It was a high-water mark in the history of foreign missions when the council declared that the churches of the West need to receive Christian missionaries as well as send them.

In the second place, there was manifest at the Jerusalem meeting a greater desire to understand other religions sympathetically and to appreciate the things that high-minded non-Christians live by. Prior to the meeting a series of stimulating papers had been prepared by competent scholars, setting forth the values in Islam, in Hinduism, in Buddhism and in Confucianism. Criticism of some of the papers was heard on the ground that they were too extravagantly favorable in their estimate of non-Christian faiths, but the very fact that such an impression could be made shows how far missionary thinking has advanced since the days when all religions except Christianity were regarded as evil. At one point at least it was agreed at Jerusalem that other religions can be regarded as allies of Christianity quite as truly as rivals; for a new enemy of all religion, Christian or non-Christian alike, was recognized in the materialism now rampant in all lands. In the face of sheer secularism and atheism all religions, however inadequate as a final fulfillment of the quest of the soul, are at any rate an assertion of spiritual realities and of the value of those things which are unseen and eternal.

Joined with this new attitude of glad appreciation of non-Christian religions was an unshakable assurance of the uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ. Indeed it was felt that the more clearly one discerns the value in other faiths, the more certainly will it be seen that Christ is the one overtowering personality in whom all those values, found elsewhere in partial and fragmentary form, come to such complete realization as to make him the Lord and Savior of all mankind. The message frankly admitted that in the past the missionary movement had not "sufficiently sought out the good and noble elements in the non-Christian beliefs," and in a generous spirit went on to call attention to some of the worthy things in non-Christian systems.

In the third place, the Jerusalem meeting furnished us most encouraging evidence that the Christianizing of our social relationships is coming to be regarded not as a mere by-product but as part and parcel of the missionary task. "Winning the world for Christ" was no longer synonymous with occupying all geographical areas with missions and churches; that there are vast unevangelized regions was beyond all dispute, but the missionary responsibility was equally seen to mean the bringing of all areas of human activity and social life under the sway of Christ. In thinking of medical missions, the emphasis was not upon the hospital as opening up channels for evangelism. Caring for the bodies of men was rather regarded as in itself a spiritual ministry, as in itself a form of Christian witness, revealing the spirit of Christ and indicating what a Christian society is like. No longer were "souls" thought of as entities that could be saved apart from their social environment. Man was treated as a unity, with his spiritual life related to all his surrounding conditions. Easily three-quarters of the agenda, as a result, was directly occupied with great social and international issues which found no more than incidental mention at even so recent a missionary gathering as the great world conference held in Edinburgh in 1910!

At Edinburgh who thought of economic and industrial problems as of more than peripheral interest to missions? At Jerusalem no topic was more prominent. At Edinburgh few perceived how close to the marrow of the missionary movement is the substitution of interracial understanding and good will for the prevailing prejudices and discriminations. At Jerusalem no one could get far away from this overshadowing concern. At Edinburgh it would have been regarded as a side issue to study the organization of the rural community. At Jerusalem even rather technical phases of the problem were of such urgency that a detailed survey had been made of rural life in one oriental country, Korea, and the council declared that "experts" on rural life must be included on missionary staffs. At Edinburgh the strongest accent was on evangelism; at Jerusalem the ideal was the same but a new emphasis had entered in, an emphasis on religious education as the great means for effecting the transformation both of personal character and of social life which the gospel demands.

In the discussion of industrial problems, the enlarging horizon of missions was disclosed most luminously. The report on this subject frankly acknowledged that "the missionary enterprise, coming as it does out of an economic order dominated almost entirely by the profit motive," has not been "so sensitive to those aspects of the Christian message as would have been necessary sensibly to mitigate the evils which advancing industrialization has brought in its train," and then proceeded to scrutinize mercilessly the exploitation of backward peoples as the result of the economic penetration of Africa and Asia by the West. Public loans for the development of undeveloped areas, it was declared, "should be made only with the knowledge and approval of a properly constituted international authority and subject to such conditions as it may prescribe,’’ and "private investments should in no case carry with them the right of political control." (Somebody please page Nicaragua!) Concrete attention was given to the protection of the more primitive races from forced labor, the alienation of their land and other economic injustices. A set of industrial standards which missions should hold up before governments in their dealing with so-called backward peoples was adopted, paralleling in many ways the "social creed" of the American churches.

In order to make certain that such statements as these should have more than ephemeral significance, it was proposed that the International Missionary Council should establish, as a part of its organization, a "bureau of social and economic research and information" on problems arising from the contact between Western civilization and undeveloped countries. This plan for helping mission agencies to be more competent to meet the terrific problems confronting the peoples for whom the missionaries work was adopted only after warm debate, and not with entire unanimity. One member of the council was heard to remark to his neighbor, "If this is the kind of program that missionary councils are interested in, we had better withdraw from them and devote ourselves to spiritual work!" The fact that the proposal for a research bureau was definitely approved, subject to concurrence by the National Christian Councils of the various countries, is a noteworthy indication of progress.

In facing the baffling issues involved in the contacts between the races the council was relentlessly candid and honest, but the final report was somewhat disappointing to those who had hoped that the marvelous fellowship between the races throughout the fortnight on the Mount of Olives might eventuate in an epoch-making declaration. To be sure, there were many admirable statements confessing how far short the churches have fallen from measuring up to the Christian ideal and calling for equal treatment of all races in policies having to do with immigration, citizenship and economic opportunity. But the general effect was marred by the disposition of a handful of delegates to infer that intermarriage might somehow be implied in every reference to "social equality." As a matter of fact, no statement on intermarriage was at any time put before the council, but a sudden cautiousness laid hold of some of the white members at the point where the proposed report said:

In lands where the races live side by side the fullest participation of all in racial intermingling for social, cultural and above all religious fellowship, and the development of friendship which such intercourse engenders, is the natural expression of our common Christianity.

Even though the statement was not substantially modified as the result of the debate, one could not help feeling in some of the discussions an atmosphere too suggestive of halfhearted compromise. One member was heard to make the comment in private conversation that a favorable reference to anything that could be called "social equality" would cost his mission board $100,000. But surely the Christian cause would have derived an incalculable gain if, at the loss of even millions of dollars, it were to bring about a day when the bogey of intermarriage could no longer serve as an excuse for perpetuating our unjust social discrimination against our colored brothers.

In international affairs it was the question of using military or naval forces to protect missionaries that occupied the center of attention. It must be added that the interest in this issue’ so far as the mission boards were concerned, seemed confined chiefly to the Americans, but they were re-enforced by the Orientals and the missionaries. An outspoken resolution which had been drafted, designed to put the council unequivocally on record as opposing any resort to military protection, was effectively shelved for a time by the protest of British delegates that their agencies had not yet given any consideration to the matter. Indeed, the council was on the very point of final adjournment without having taken any positive action. This eleventh hour sidetracking was prevented by the insistence of one American member. It is only simple justice to mention his name; it was Bishop Francis J. McConnell. E. Stanley Jones, of India, followed him by declaring: "If no action is taken on this matter, much of the rest of what we have said and done will be rendered fruitless." After the issue was thus squarely reopened, just as the clock was striking midnight and ushering in Easter Day, a clear-cut resolution was adopted which said, in part:

Inasmuch as the use or the threat of use of armed forces by the country from which they come for the protection of the missionary and missionary property not only creates widespread misunderstanding as to the underlying motive of missionary work, but also gravely hinders the acceptance of the Christian message, the International Missionary Council

(1) places on record its conviction that the protection of missionaries should only be by such methods as will promote good will in personal and official relations and (2) urges on all missionary societies that they make no claim on their governments for the armed defense of their missionaries and their property.

From all the addresses and discussions, reports and resolutions of the two weeks’ gathering one comes back with two impressions that overtop everything else like mountain peaks among low-lying ridges.

The first is the glorious realization that there exists today a Christian movement which has become really conscious of its world-wide character and able to function as a world-wide unit. To point out conditions that limit this universal fellowship would be easy -- as, for example, the fact that the ancient Orthodox churches of the Near East are not included in it. In that respect, Stockholm and Lausanne were ahead of Jerusalem. Still, it remains true that in the International Missionary Council we have the most definitely organized and articulate world organization of Christian forces today. United in it, under its new constitution adopted at Jerusalem and under the farseeing chairmanship of Dr. John R. Mott, are not only all the Protestant missionary forces of the West, but also the National Christian Councils which in recent years have come into being in China, Japan, India and many other parts of what is commonly called the missionary field. To have achieved even this measure of unity across our divisive national boundaries is a notable achievement for which no thoughtful person who feels deeply the inadequacies of a merely national Christianity can be too thankful. One hopes it may be a prophecy of an international council of churches which may soon bind together the total life and work of the churches throughout the world.

The second outstanding impression that one carries away from Jerusalem is the spiritual greatness and power of the foreign missionary movement. All the criticisms of it are dwarfed into pettiness in comparison with the majestic moral meaning of this enterprise of building a Christian world. The closing paragraph of the message adopted by the council is one that will long abide in the memory of those who were at Jerusalem and truly expresses the call which they heard to a fresh and courageous commitment to the world-wide cause of Christ:

We are persuaded that we and all Christian people must seek a more heroic practice of the gospel. It cannot be that our present complacency and moderation are a faithful expression of the mind of Christ and of the meaning of his cross in the midst of the wrong and want and sin of our modern world. As we contemplate the work which Christ has laid upon his church, we who are met here on the Mount of Olives, in sight of Calvary, would take up for ourselves and summon those from whom we come, and to whom we return, to take up with us the cross of Christ, and all that for which it stands, and to go forth into the world to live in the fellowship of his sufferings and by the power of his resurrection.

A Liberal Bandaged but Unbowed

When Dr. Morrison’s thirty years of editorial service through The Christian Century began, I was in the eighth grade. During a full half of these thirty years, his mind has been a salutary factor among the many which have been reshaping mine. It is with an acknowledgment of debt, therefore, that I try to set down here some account of what has been going on in me during a part of this time.

Not that it matters much, to any but the few people who have to get along with me at close range. What matters most to them, moreover, is how I actually behave, not what I have been thinking and why. But only on the latter point is there anything to say here. And there is little assurance that even this can be reported accurately, for ten years back. In the absence of a written record there are only afterthoughts to offer, and afterthoughts in these matters are of course tidied up to suit one’s present mood and the public gaze. What follows, then, should be regarded with suspicion. Especially if it should fit in too neatly with what everybody else says in this series. For that will mean that instead of reporting an individual course of events, I shall have slipped into a current fashion, and simply retailed that.

In any case it seems necessary to start by trying to say what there was of me when the decade began. My mind, or whatever it is, has always been a rather messy jumble of strains never properly sorted out. One of them is an incurably sentimental, Pollyannish one that has to be snubbed continually, and at times is highly embarrassing. Another seems to be a more legitimate sort of emotional irritability that makes for weeping, glowering or wall-banging on various provocations. This sometimes boils over quite suddenly. Another is a combination of indolence, timidity and like ingredients that seem to go along with a distressingly slow basic tempo and chronic tardiness of response in all sorts of situations. Still another, late to appear but seemingly as durable as the rest, is a kind of profane delight in logical clarity and "hard facts." This strain was a dominant one in my lawyer father, but he died before I knew him as a distinct person at all. It probably was strong also in his father and grandfather, both southern Presbyterian preachers who pioneered in Minnesota from territorial days. I have a marked-up copy of Jonathan Edwards’ works that belonged to the former, and another of Calvin’s Institutes that belonged to the latter, and in both it is the hardier passages that are underscored.

This strain of realism cropped out first in my younger brother, who until his death in 1927 was studying medicine and preparing for research in pathology. I slowly learned to prize it in him, and in other medical friends and relatives by-marriage among whom it has been necessary for me to keep some sort of footing for upward of twenty years. The scientific temper and habits of mind concretely embodied in these half-dozen chemists and medical people have been for two decades a part of my household air. Without being able to match them, I have liked their straightforward thinking, and have come to rejoice at finding similar straightforwardness in certain philosophers and theologians from Plato onward.

This relatively late discovery of what "science" means to a scientist was superimposed for me on a small-town, middle-class, midwestern upbringing and a liberal college and seminary course. Both upbringing and education were absorbed like so much milk and eggs, with entire docility and without any intellectual misgivings. There were plenty of emotional headaches, such as a verbally precocious and otherwise immature youngster has to put up with in school and college. But there were no mental or spiritual upheavals, no serious disillusionments, and no fundamental doubts of any sort. Throughout a rather sickly, sheltered, happy boyhood and a more independent but never obstreperous youth, an ingrained confidence in people -- especially older people -- and a naive trust in God never wavered. These were most of all my mother’s gift to me, and she was a person of no lukewarm kind.

With minor though growing disturbances, this outlook of mine had lasted through college, through six years of further study at home and in England during the war and the early "peace," and then through six years of teaching in college and seminary. A decade ago, between 1926 and 1929, for reasons that do not matter here, the whole structure was demolished. Naive trust was gone, and first numbness, then corrosive doubt, took its place. Doubt that there is any God, and that the world’s noise means anything. Doubt that human beings -- even older people -- are fit to run their affairs without such tutelage as they plainly do not have. Doubt that I, in particular, had ever been or would ever be more than a kind of glib, walking lie, made of shiny words. The collapse, long overdue, was thorough.

All these doubts have persisted, and I presume will persist. But their deadly paralyzing force seems to be gone. After the first few months of chaos, a new foundation of confidence began to take shape in me, far below the word-level. At first tenuous and elusive as cobweb, it gradually became a fabric of such strength that neither criticism (which I have courted) nor shock has since broken it. It seems to be one sort of faith in God. But it is so undramatic and matter-of-fact, so lacking in thrills and moral splendor, that if anyone should say he has a better name for it, I am quite ready to listen. I know it is not the outcome of a deliberate "will to believe," nor of an articulate thought process. Of "unconscious wishes," naturally, one can speak with less assurance, but at least I am not wholly unacquainted with the better-known theories about these also, and have tried to take them into account. In any event, the faith I am talking about is something come upon me, not something I consciously produced. Both I and others have tried to break it down by critical analysis, thus far without success.

This new confidence was first prompted, unless memory at this point is all wrong, by two very hard facts: the invincibility of a clear-headed medical student dying of cancer, and the impassive bulk of the Rockies above timber line, which I saw for the first time four months later. To them was added almost at once the departure of another young doctor, my closest friend, for the Rockefeller yellow fever work in Africa, from which he did not return. I worked over his diary later, and read with a layman’s eye the papers in which he had summed up his part of the co-operative research. What even I could see in his mind and in my brother’s, a kind of quiet ruthlessness and candor in search of truth, stood up well alongside the rock masses of the continental divide. It was reassuring beyond words to find that sort of strength so unostentatiously embodied, so close by. It was no less reassuring to realize that the actual world they had faced -- the world of mountains and microbes -- though it had brought death to their bodies had first yielded up some of its secrets to their minds, for other men to use. It was not simply a nightmare world, then. At least in some respects it made sense.

How far it might make sense I do not know. Some of the easier parts of Whitehead, then Plato, then a whole series of thinkers lighted up by these two, helped me to glimpse a few of the simpler presuppositions that scientific men take for granted in their work, and encouraged me to look further. Next it became evident that workmanship of all sorts, from the humblest to the most exalted, calls for similar presuppositions. Little by little the notion grew on me that all of these slow-coming, painfully obvious insights of mine were, without exception, elaborations of the inarticulate confidence which had itself been growing in me all the while. My faith in God, then, born or reborn out of the ruin of thirty years’ attempts at thinking, was slowly taking shape in the midst of close companionship with working scientists, a little of whose temper I may have caught. It was guided by philosophic arguments, a little of whose drift I have understood. And it grew and became interwoven into an everyday working life which has called for so much more than all my resources that I am never caught up.

That tells about where things were and how they were going ten years ago. The personal theology in which these tendencies were trying to articulate themselves was liberalism of a familiar sort. My thinking ranged between the romantic immanentism of Schleiermacher, at one extreme, and the science-minded, sharp-edged theism of Tennant, at the other. Kant was presupposed in both, and Plato (especially in his later dialogues) seemed to me to have laid foundations for them all. Platonism became a growing enthusiasm and "rational theology" a kind of passion.

Along with this went a simple sort of social liberalism: the outlook of a sheltered, small-town person of mild habits, very slightly aware of the more savage forces that operate in the economic and political arenas. Except at one point. The peace treaties and the postwar flood of prewar documents had driven me to a pretty thoroughly disillusioned pacifism, as regards modern war. I knew then a good deal less than everybody knows now about international politics, the forces that underlie it, and the diversity of its problem situations. The detailed pattern of my pacifism, therefore, has changed, like any empirical conviction, in the light of new data, mainly in the direction of pessimism for the immediate future. The tangle of political and economic conflicts is so much worse than I realized ten years ago, and the apparent resources of human intelligence so much less, that I no longer hope confidently for "peace in our time." But the basic conviction has grown stronger, not weaker, with every year that nothing men can do to mankind is worse than the totalitarian war of our era.

This is not to call war "absolute evil," nor to say, "there never was a bad peace." Nothing human is absolute evil, not even war; and Versailles and Munich -- those "open covenants, openly arrived at" -- cry to heaven how bad a peace can be. The point is simply that however bad the alternative, a general war is almost certain to be worse. Moreover, if and when general war comes again, there will be need for a much larger minority than there was in 1914 to resist the inevitable war hysteria, the orthodox dehumanizing of the enemy, and the making of another nationalistic peace. I am still a pacifist, then, set against war -- most of all against expeditionary war in defense of democracy, peace, freedom, religion, or anything else high and noble. Even wars for self-defense, legally justifiable and pulse-stirring as they are, seem in most cases to retard rather than to advance the labored struggle of mankind toward humane living. In some cases it may be otherwise. I do not see how one can know in advance, unless one can get very clear answers to the questions: "What precisely is to be defended? Is it likely to survive mobilization of industry and the public mind for war? What other methods have been tried, and are still to be tried?" But trying to answer these questions is likely to bring into the foreground problems of quite another sort, though it took me a good while to see it.

If the aftermath of 1919 ruined my taste for war, it was the aftermath of 1929 that has ruined my complacency about our kind of peace. Before the Coolidge bull market I took American capitalism for granted. Worse than that -- and my ears redden at the memory -- I was more than a little dazzled by the noisy prosperity of 1928-29, and mistook it for boisterous, if somewhat immoral, good health. Economic crises were to me only vague words, and economic morality chiefly a matter of individual honesty and good will. Mea culpa. It took three years of growing disillusionment and anxiety to cure me of that particular blindness. But the cure promises to be lasting. I read some samples of Veblen and then of Marx and Lenin and various lesser image-smashers, trying hard for the first time to see what they were driving at. This was not easy for an economic illiterate, but it seemed all the more necessary for that reason. At the same time, it seemed necessary also to try for some notion of what more orthodox economists were saying; so I tried to read a little of Moulton, Slichter and Keynes as well.

Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace had dropped at my feet like a meteorite back in 1920, and stirred me to a fine moral indignation, but it had been an isolated impact. Now, with the predictions of that book being visibly fulfilled on all sides, I began to sense in some living fashion a really concrete relation between ethics and economics. For the first time it began to dawn on me in what sense moral values may be recognized as interwoven with, and "dialectically" exemplified by, the massive order of economic facts. Instead of seeing moral obligations simply as individual and social ideals externally related to the factual order of life and physical reality, I began to see them as demands on human life no less intrinsically real than gravitation. Familiar words about God in history, and a moral order of the world, were becoming concrete for me as I struggled to come to terms with economic determinism, both as theory and as an increasingly evident and momentous fact.

Not, however, as the most ultimate nor the most important kind of fact. The still more ultimate world of mountains and microbes and the uneasy animals we call men, once established in my thinking, remained unforgettable even for a little while. Human nature, in the sense of man’s basic physical, emotional, impulsive and intellectual constitution, somehow moral at the core, seemed plainly more fundamental than any particular sort of human behavior, even economic; and human nature itself emerges in a world order far more ancient and more fundamental still. Against that background, dogmatic collectivism has seemed only a little less shallow than naive individualism. Less shallow because it recognizes at least that the individual is not master of his fate and cannot live for himself alone, but still shallow in supposing that the human group -- class, race or species -- can do so.

There is no particular elation, but there is a grim sort of reassurance, in seeing men’s latest collective efforts in Russia and Germany to seize for themselves by violence a kingdom of heaven, colliding once more with stubborn nature and human nature. Whether the totalitarian governments collapse or change their ways and whether the change comes soon or late, the epidemic of purges and the spreading disaffection of once enthusiastic followers reinforce the old lesson that power in itself is no cure for man’s ills, and that human institutions are not equal to the task of assuring human salvation. Man himself is still more important than any of his actions or institutions, and much more difficult to make over. For that very reason, man is less important even to himself than the God whose world has brought mankind to birth, and who must save it if it is to be saved.

Concerning both of these more basic matters, man and God, my thought has moved from a primarily philosophic toward a more definitely theological orientation. Ten years ago I scarcely distinguished these terms, except as regards their scope. Theology seemed to me essentially a more specialized kind of religious philosophy. Eight years ago my first serious encounter with Barthian thought, embodied in Visser ‘t Hooft, Pierre Maury and Hanns Lilje, left me puzzled and combative, and I fear not much enlightened. But Richard Niebuhr’s patient, resourceful flank attacks were already making me see that something was there which could not be ignored, something which makes theology a discipline more clearly distinguishable from philosophy than I had suspected.

Six years ago began in earnest my post-graduate theological education: six years of continuous hammering by the more "dialectical" members of a theological discussion group which still retains the fire, if not the innocence, of its younger days. The vigorous impacts of these men -- Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr, Wilhelm Pauck, John Mackay, and later Paul Tillich and Emil Brunner, are some of them -- have beaten upon me not only during semiannual week-end sessions, but day in and day out, through their writings and through my vivid, ever present memories of their minds (and bodies) in action. It has been drastic discipline, not always easy to take, but invaluable; the more because of lively counter-disturbances emanating from Edwin Aubrey, John Bennett, George Thomas and other sound liberals whose heads, like mine, are bandaged but unbowed.

It has become more and more plain that I am no fit material for a good Barthian, nor for any kind of theologian except some obstinate sort of liberal. The more extreme kind of revelation-theology, whether Barthian or other, seems to me all too likely to slip into the very subjectivism it deplores. Special revelations -- the only sort recognized by this kind of theology -- have always needed to be checked by some more general frame of reference: the written Scriptures coolly and historically studied, the tradition and common experience of the church, and the still more general experiences and tested beliefs of mankind. I cannot see any reason to suppose that this need for objective criticism of immediate insights is less today than it was in St. Paul’s time, or in Luther’s and Calvin’s. Nor can I see that a single test, least of all a simple reference to the Bible as understood by the recipient of the special revelation, is now or ever will be a sufficient safeguard against the vagaries to which intensely sincere minds are sometimes even more liable than those whose convictions are less fiercely one-sided. In short, I see no way in which theology can get on safely without history, philosophy and common sense.

In principle, most if not all the members of the group just mentioned would agree, though in detail we are still healthily far from agreement. Such agreement and disagreement, with mutual understanding and respect, is the essence, I take it, of the liberal tradition in its broad sense, from the beginning of Christianity until now.

On the other hand, I have been driven, willy-nilly, to recognize that theology cannot get on without special revelations, either. Indeed, I have been convinced that it must start from such revelations, above all from those which center about Jesus Christ, and the faith which they evoke. This amounts to a Copernican change in my orientation. With it has come a new sense of the special significance -- long obvious enough to others, but to me unsuspected -- of the Bible, the creeds, theological tradition and the Christian Church. For years I tried to resolve these simply into illustrations of familiar logical formulas, the while overlooking or apologizing for their more refractory aspects. Now, with the sort of relief that comes when one moves from thin ice onto solid ground, I find myself taking them still more simply as concrete instances of living give-and-take among men, and between God and man, which both demand and resist logical inquiry. That they resist it is no reason to adjourn the effort to get them into rational perspectives. On the other hand, in their presence our logic seems clearly to have neither the first nor the last word.

I have been compelled, in short, to recognize that for theology two foundations are equally necessary: specific revelations of reality both divine and non-divine, and the principle of relevance or coherence which is basic to all rational living. Without the former, there would be no data for theology. Without the latter, all data would be meaningless, and none of them could be construed as revelations of God. Fides quaerens intellectum would more nearly describe my thinking today than at any prior time in these ten years.

The rise of the more blatant neo-paganisms has reinforced my conviction of the need for both these factors. If human decency is ever to be won, more plainly than ever it must be in part through the widening and deepening of the rational insights against which the cults of blood and soil are in revolt. But whatever hope I now have for such growth of man toward rational decency is rooted in faith that Jesus Christ has given us men our best clue to the natures of both man and God. If that be true, the Herods and the Caesars will not have their way.

The Rapprochement of the Churches

The Lausanne Conference was the opening door toward wider Christian fellowship. It registered the fact that there is a movement in the whole church for the unity of Christendom which the love of our separate communions will not be able to suppress. We appear to have gone the limit in our divisions. Any other divisions in the church will likely be of minor consequence. The tide has definitely turned toward unity. The Lausanne conference had two main roots -- one in the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in the spring of 1910, which revealed how widely on the foreign missionary fields the spirit of federation and unity was operating, and the other in the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the fall of 1910, which called for a commission on a world conference on Faith and Order, having to do with the whole church, at home and abroad. Other communions in America, notably the Disciples and Congregationalists, took similar action in their general conventions at the same time, as did the Eastern Orthodox in their general synod in Constantinople.

During these seventeen years the churches began to rephrase their thinking and slowly to readjust their attitudes. The Protestant Episcopal Church organized an interdenominational commission, which made approaches practically to the whole church. Most of the non-Roman Catholic communions, representing about one-half of the Christian world, responded by the appointment of commissions to co-operate in preparation for the conference. The Roman Catholic half declined co-operation, to our regret, but the pope has taken a friendly interest, and Roman Catholic publications have recently had many articles bearing on unity. Two of their priests -- one from Austria and the other from Breslau -- sat throughout the conference as unofficial observers.

Such a conference is at once entangled with difficulties. To begin with, there are the linguistic barriers. Translations do not always convey the same meaning. Then there are the results of denominational isolation, by which traditional impressions have been handed down from generation to generation without revision, so that a person of one communion thinks of a person of another communion as being something which he is not. Denominationalism sets up hard and fast prejudices and creates an unbrotherly atmosphere through which it is difficult to discover that which is real in others.

All denominationalism, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican or Protestant, has about it an unwholesome atmosphere, not Christian at all but pagan, especially where there is sharp isolation such as has obtained between many of the Christian communions. In the conference the Eastern Orthodox delegates explicitly claimed infallibility for their church, and a like claim of infallibility was more or less present in the minds of many delegates of other churches. At the same time it is well to remember that all the churches are under the ban of excommunication. The Eastern Orthodox excommunicated the Roman Catholics; the Roman Catholics excommunicated the Eastern Orthodox and, a few hundred years later, the Protestants and Anglicans; and these, in turn, continued the same policy of excommunication, until today every communion is under the ban -- either it went out on the threat of excommunication, or was put out. This, of course, would be childish if it were not so tragic. It reveals how completely the church has been ruled by the pride and opinion of men rather than by the Holy Spirit.

Up to this time there has been little indication of penitence on the part either of the excommunicator or the excommunicated. Out of all this historical tangle and the scramble for orthodoxy, infallibility and spiritual superiority there was, of course, not much place for humility and penitence. The distinctive denominational claims of all -- catholic and protestant -- have grown less spiritual with the years and therefore more foreign to the religion of Christ, so that the world has judged the religion thus set forth as in large part fictitious, and from it the multitudes are slowly turning away.

The Lausanne conference came at an opportune time. Both the church and the world are weary -- the church weary in its unnatural and unspiritual struggle, the world weary for God whom the church has eclipsed with its denominational rivalries. Inevitably the past would project itself into the conference -- too much so -- but it was unavoidable with groups as conservative as were the delegations from so many churches. They were mostly officials, sensitive to upholding the communions from which they came. There was a marked concern for the institution at home, which our forebears founded and which we are still building. It is not too much to say that most of the delegates who spoke looked backward. However, in their back-gate look there was usually a tolerance and forbearance, sometimes a pathos, all of which indicated that vast changes were already under way.

The personnel of the conference was of unusual interest. There were representatives from all the continents and from many of the islands of the sea -- England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Greece, Armenia, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, India, China, Japan, South America, Canada, United States and elsewhere. There were patriarchs from Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria; archbishops from the Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran communions; bishops from these communions and from the Old Catholics, Methodists and Moravians; members of the supreme courts of Germany and Scotland; deans, canons, professors, executives, editors, ministers, priests, missionaries -- and seven women! It was a fine company of Christian people, many of whom had traveled thousands of miles to confer on the great task of a united Christendom.

The mere fact of such a conference was a vast achievement. The addresses revealed the depth of earnestness in the hearts of the delegates as they sat through the sessions from the beginning to the close. A wide variety of views crowded every day’s discussion, but a most commendable spirit prevailed. This was due largely to the chairman, Bishop Charles H. Brent, and to the deputy chairman, Dr. A. E. Garvie. With three languages -- English, German and French -- as channels of expression in every session and with traditional misunderstandings and sectarian prejudices, there would be, of necessity, some critical moments, but the chairmen always so wisely steered the conference out of troubled waters that those instances which did occur were of trifling consequence by the side of the spirit of gracious fellowship which pervaded the delegates both in the conference sessions and in the university halls and hotel lobbies. All these experiences tend to make friendships, and friendship, after all, is the highway to a united church.

Bishop Brent’s opening sermon in the cathedral was the call of a prophet. He was calm and courageous, but, out of several hundred speakers, perhaps not more than two dozen followed in his prophetic path. He was not afraid to say that "the hundred missionary societies in China today are as suicidal for Christianity as the civil divisions are to the national peace and prosperity." Missionary appeals are losing their power through our sectarianism, being resented by the natives among whom missionaries work and, at home, falling upon the indifferent ears of a denominational church. It is far more important to the cause of Christianity that the missionary boards in the homelands should get together and form definite plans for co-operation than to encourage the growing protest from the foreign missionary fields against imposing upon them a denominational Christianity. A few men on missionary boards would lose their positions by taking such a stand, but they would hasten the unity of the church and the conversion of the world. Which is more important?

The conference discussions divided into six subjects, each being considered for an entire day, beginning with two thirty minute addresses, followed by four or five fifteen-and ten-minute addresses, and the rest of the day being given to open discussion. The subjects were: "The Church’s Message to the World -- the Gospel," "The Nature of the Church," "The Church’s Common Confession of Faith," "The Church’s Ministry," "The Church’s Sacraments" and "The Unity of Christendom and the Relation Thereto of Existing Churches." Then the conference was divided into small groups of twenty or twenty-five, so that everyone had an opportunity to contribute to the discussion, which enriched the findings that came out of these discussions, representing, as far as possible, the general mind of the gathering. These findings were received and will be sent to the various churches represented. Upon the action of the churches the continuation committee will consider plans for another conference, for Lausanne is only the beginning. As to how many conferences will be necessary, that depends upon how fast the churches travel toward unity.

The report on the church’s message was received with the support of the whole conference. The Eastern Orthodox delegation asked to be excused from voting on the other reports; but they heartily supported this one, which affirmed that the message of the church to the world must always remain the gospel of Jesus Christ -- the gift of a new word from God to this old world of sin and death, being the prophetic call to sinful men to turn to God as the only way by which humanity can escape from those class and race hatreds which devastate society, and fulfill humanity’s longing for intellectual sincerity, social justice and spiritual inspiration.

The report on the nature of the church was a little more difficult. It affirmed that the church is constituted by the will of God’ not by the will or consent or beliefs of men, whether as individuals or societies. God is its creator, Jesus Christ its head and the Holy Spirit the source of its continuous life. The church is the communion of true believers in Christ Jesus, according to the New Testament, built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Recognizing various views as to the nature of the church, the report expressed sorrow in consequence of our divisions and urged the unity of the church.

The report on the church’s common confession of faith brought to the front the creedal controversy. The majority of the communions represented hold to the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds; others, such as Baptists, Congregationalists and Disciples, recognize these as witnesses in past generations, but do not hold them in the same reverence, emphasizing instead a personal faith in the living God through the living Christ. The report sought, with much difficulty, to cover both of these positions, recognizing, as it affirmed, that the creeds are our common heritage from the ancient church and, at the same time, leaving on record the unanimous testimony that no external and written standards can suffice without an inward and personal experience of union with God in Christ.

The report on the ministry was one of the longest of all the reports. It affirmed that the ministry is a gift of God through Christ to his church, and is essential to the being and well-being of the church, that men gifted for the work of the ministry, called by the Spirit and accepted by the church, are commissioned through an act of ordination by prayer and the laying on of hands. Various forms of ministry have grown up according to the circumstances of the several communions and their beliefs as to the mind of Christ and the guidance of the New Testament. These have been abundantly used by the Holy Spirit, but the differences which have arisen in regard to the authority and function of these various forms of ministry have been and are the occasion of manifold doubts, questions and misunderstandings to the distress and wounding of faithful souls. Consequently the provision of a ministry, acknowledged in every part of the church as possessing the sanction of the whole church, is an urgent need. The episcopal, presbyterial and congregational systems, being believed by many to be essential to the good order of the church, must have an appropriate place in the order of the reunited church. Each communion, recalling the abundant blessing of God vouchsafed to its ministry, should gladly bring to the common life of the united church its own spiritual treasures.

In the report on the sacraments it was agreed that they are of divine appointment and that the church ought thankfully to observe them as divine gifts, baptism being administered with water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for the remission of sins, not ignoring the difference in conception, interpretation and mode which exists among us, and the holy communion being the church’s most sacred act of worship, in which the Lord’s atoning death is commemorated and proclaimed. The report closed with a prayer that the differences which prevent full communion at the present time may be removed.

The report on the unity of Christendom and the relation of existing churches thereto was severely and unnecessarily attacked; nevertheless, it was a most satisfactory report, being divided into four sections: (1) fellowship in Life and Work, as expressed in the Stockholm conference of 1925; (2) fellowship in Faith and Order, as expressed in the Lausanne conference; (3) ways of approach emphasizing appreciation of each other, prayer for one another and working together; (4) completed fellowship, which would be realized by all God’s children joining in communion at the Lord’s table, closing with the prayer that God would give us wisdom and courage to do his will.

It was an admirable report with which to close the conference -- cautious, practical and hopeful. It was prepared chiefly by the Archbishop of Upsala and the Archbishop of Armagh and reviewed by Bishop Brent, the Bishop of Gloucester, Canon Tatlow and others. It ought to have passed with an enthusiastic vote. Inasmuch as all the findings had to pass the conference unanimously, this report was referred to the continuation committee. It furnished another instance of a sectarian outburst, which must be expected so long as sectarian attitudes hold priority over penitence in a divided church. In this instance the protest came from the Anglo-Catholics. It might have come from any other, for many Christians regulate their interest in Christian unity upon whether it comes their way. The Anglo-Catholics are not alone in this by any means, but their cause was greatly discounted by such an unreasonable protest, which looked as if it was the last chance, coming at the close of the conference, and they wanted to make use of that chance.

But the results of the conference exceeded the expectation of many. It is a great advance when men who differ widely can sit down together and discuss frankly and patiently their differences and arise with understanding and appreciation, if not agreements. This was the victory of Lausanne.

It would have been a still greater victory if the conference could have closed with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. It really lacked that seal of fellowship. And the fact that it could not be done left an ugly picture. But it could not be done, showing us how far we are from possessing the badge of Christian discipleship, which is love. Long ago for love the church substituted orthodoxy, which is very much less expensive. The council of Nicaea, in 325 A.D., confirmed the transfer. Orthodoxy is a word, however, which no dictionary can define, there being several hundred meanings, depending upon which communion one is a member of.

Out of this confusion has come sectarianism, which is the affirmation by one particular communion that it is right and all the others are wrong. It is common for the episcopal communions, such as the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican, to speak of themselves as the "church" and all the other communions as the "sects" or the milder term "denominations," which means the same thing. A somewhat similar position is taken by several Protestant communions. To affirm that the Roman Catholics or Anglicans are the church and that Presbyterians and Methodists are sects -- that is to say, spiritually inferior to them, and outside of the church; or that one of the Protestant communions is the church and the Roman Catholics and Anglicans are sects, belongs in the same small business of excommunication. It shows how completely the pride and opinion of men, rather than the Holy Spirit, rule in the consciousness of Christian people. Would that all communions might stress penitence, rather than pride!

Lausanne marked the passing of uniformity and the coming of diversity within unity. Rebaptism and reordination must gradually fade out in any plan for unity. The equality of all Christians before God must find its embodiment in the ecclesiastical order. The next conference will go beyond this conference. If there could be a conference without officially appointed delegates and constituted of younger groups, the interpretations would go far in advance of our denominational conservatism. There is room in these times for adventurers, and the adventurers will come.

Wild Country and Wildlife

The photograph is actually that of a stuffed museum specimen, for the Carolina parakeet became extinct more than 50 years ago. The species’s demise was hastened by hunters who had learned this trick: shoot one bird and let its cries draw the rest of the flock. Instead of scattering, the others hovered over their wounded companion. Entire flocks were easy targets for a single man with a rifle.

My Park Service friend works in the area of cultural preservation. He keeps the picture before him as a reminder of how easy it is for one generation to destroy what it has inherited -- to drop the torch.

The ethical mandate underlying my friend’s imagery is a familiar one: the earth "belongs as much to those who are to come after us as to us," British author John Ruskin pointed out. "We have no right . . . to deprive them of benefits it was in our power to bequeath."

Henry David Thoreau railed at his forebears for their negligence in the natural world:

. . . Thinking that I have here the entire poem, to my chagrin I learn that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places.

Scientists -- less elegiac but more explicit -- have chronicled the environmental depredation, charting the toll on ecosystems, the impact on genetic diversity and the consequences for human health and research. "The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct," Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson has warned, "is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us."

But the consequences go beyond ethics and ecology and demand a theological response as well. At stake is not simply the deterioration but the destruction of whole segments of God’s creation. In two areas in particular -- the extinction of species and the dismemberment of wilderness -- the damage can be irreversible.

Biblical passages illustrate, with startling clarity in Job and the Psalms, that the earth’s creatures owe their existence to God. They honor the Creator, reflect his glory, and subsist for his benefit, apart from any value they represent to humans. God, in turn, cares for his creation with a concern that is not merely collective, but -- as Noah’s selection of the animals reveals -- extends to each distinct thread of the tapestry. "Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds" (in the words of the psalmist) are spiritual, as well as ecological, resources.

Such a perspective fails to consider that overhunting, pest-control measures, and habitat destruction have caused the rate of extinction to accelerate exponentially. Conservationist Norman Myers, author of The Sinking Ark: A New Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species (Pergamon, 1979), estimates that with the advent of technology between 1600 and 1900, an average of one species of bird or mammal (little is known about reptiles, amphibians, fishes, invertebrates and plants) disappeared every four years, compared to one every 1,000 years during the "great dying" of the dinosaurs. By the beginning of the 20th century, human-induced extinctions were quickening to one species every year. The final quarter of the century, writes Myers, may usher in a "biological debacle greater than all mass extinctions of the geological past put together."

Wilderness is being lost at a similar pace. During the 1930s, Robert Marshall, a founder of the Wilderness Society, observed that wild country was "disappearing like a snowbank melting away on a southfacing slope in the hot June sun." Half a century later in the U.S., only a few remnants of desert, mountain and forest have been preserved, and pressure to develop even these patches has begun to be exerted.

If only as refuges for endangered creatures, these islands of wilderness could be defended theologically. But a more compelling reason lies in their own value as faith-nurturing reservoirs. Throughout history -- for the ancient Hebrews and Old Testament prophets, for Desert Fathers and monastic orders -- the wilderness has humbled visitors and deflated pride. In the clear, spare lonely places, contemporary sojourners continue to sense their limits and dependence on God.

Wild country is not sacrosanct: not every acre need be protected. But when so little wilderness remains in a nation, the contemplative gifts it offers -- such as silence, solitude and a sense of awe -- become worth as much as the marketable commodities that can be extracted. We need these sanctuaries of stillness where we can withdraw briefly to get our spiritual bearings. The desert and mountain remain for us, as they were for Jesus, settings for silence and prayer.

Writing in The Christian Century nearly two decades ago, educator Richard Baer noted: "So far the church has not sufficiently grasped the nature of the present [ecological] crisis, has not understood how powerfully dehumanizing is man’s wanton exploitation of his natural environment, has not appreciated the degree to which man-made ugliness and the fouling of natural beauty are corroding man’s mind and spirit" ("Land Misuse: A Theological Concern," October 12, 1966, p. 1240).

But interest has rarely extended to wilderness and endangered species. "The church’s concern has been conspicuous by its absence," admits an official with one Protestant denomination in New York. Adds the former president of a national environmental organization, who has looked in vain for support from religious groups in efforts to protect wilderness and wildlife: "The Unitarians occasionally let us meet in their buildings; that’s been our primary contact with churches on this issue."

Denomination staffers suggest a variety of reasons for the neglect: a tendency to perceive environmental problems as primarily health issues; limited resources; a disinclination to act in an unfamiliar arena ("We understand someone who is hungry," says one official. "We don’t understand, in St. Paul’s words, ‘the earth groaning in travail."’)

In addition, there may be an assumption that concern for creatures somehow diminishes concern for humans. "Why don’t you do something that helps people," one wildlife biologist was asked at her church. Some public opinion polls link religious commitment with a willingness to exploit rather than preserve the earth’s resources, and writers such as Lynn White and Ian McHarg have alluded to an anthropocentric strain running through the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But I think the church’s slighting of wilderness and wildlife is due less to hostility than to indifference -- a disregard for the peculiar theological resources at stake and the speed with which they are being crippled. As stewards of creation, we have often dozed in the pews.

David Day, a Canadian author of a book on extinct species, recalls that what affected him most profoundly while doing his research was viewing the actual relics: the aurochs’s horn, the pelt of the Bali tiger, the weathered rib cage of a Steller’s sea cow. Suddenly, he writes, he was drawn into "the reality of their vanished existence.

The church also needs to seek ways to be drawn into this reality and jarred out of its complacency, for the segments of nature receiving the least attention may be suffering the most irreversible damage. Like my Park Service friend, we could profit by keeping our own photographs of vanished legacies before us, placed alongside the church budget report, as a reminder that stewardship has always meant more than fund-raising. There is no shortage of ecclesiastical channels to bring these neglected portions of creation into the life of the church: through sermons and liturgy, through educational forums and retreats, to recall that wild country and wildlife exist not only as strands in the biological web, but as gifts that illumine the sovereignty of God. Their loss leads to a spiritual, as well as ecological, impoverishment.

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul wrote: "Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (1:20). The church has often seen nature as a window to God. But with few exceptions it has been tamed nature -- the pastoral and bucolic that humans have fenced and framed. The wilder corners of creation, bearing no imprint of humankind, have been allowed to slip into disrepair.

But all parts of creation can provide (as C. S. Lewis once wrote of spontaneous pleasures) "‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience" -- glimmerings of divine handiwork that help us to gather our spiritual bearings. Wilderness and the spectrum of species -- no less than other facets of nature -- point us in the direction of the Creator. Rather heedlessly, we have been extinguishing these "patches of Godlight" for those who are to come after us.

Coventry Cathedral’s Message of Forgiveness

I walk into the bombed-out nave, its windows empty of stained glass, only its roofless sandstone walls revealing the medieval cathedral that crumpled under Nazi explosions.

A few yards away rises Coventry's new postwar cathedral, but I begin here in the ruined shell's sobering chill. On the night of 14 November 1940, Hermann Goering, chief of the Luftwaffe, unleashed nearly four hundred fifty bombers from bases in Brittany for the air raid on Coventry. Timed to the full moon and perversely code-named Moonlight Sonata, the operation dropped five hundred tons of high explosives and forty thousand firebombs during eleven hours. It was the first attempt in history to destroy an entire city in a single air attack.

Coventry suffered enormously. The bombing killed or seriously injured more than fourteen hundred people. Goering added a new word to the lexicon: other British cities, he warned, would soon be "coventrated."

One of the buildings destroyed was this cathedral, which traced its roots to the 12th century. The new cathedral could have been built over this same site instead of adjacent to it, but the architect resolved to retain these walls as a memorial. In the open air, with its tracery empty of glass, the ruined shell stretches toward the sky in perpetual Calvary.

The hum of traffic and smell of diesel fuel drift through the ruined nave, hinting of the very industriousness that drew Nazi bombers in the first place to Coventry, the center of Britain's motor and aviation industry a hundred miles northwest of London. The cathedral's losses were not unique; the building shared the fate of other portions of Coventry. Firewatchers had attempted to quench the incendiary bombs, but too many fell, water and sand ran out, and flames spread. With water trucks busy over the city, the men salvaged what they could as fire fed on the wooden pews, organ, and roof beams. It was "as though I were watching the crucifixion of Jesus upon his cross," Provost R.T Howard recalled as he witnessed a place where Christians had worshiped for hundreds of years being destroyed in one night.

The morning after the bombing, the cathedral's stonemason took two charred oaken beams from the debris and tied them together into a cross. Another man, a local Anglican priest, plucked from the ruins three medieval nails and fashioned them into a second cross. These two images became Coventry's postwar witness, symbols of both Good Friday and Easter. Physical destruction, the burnt crosses insisted, does not have the final word.

In the chill of an early December afternoon, I work my way slowly down the ruined nave. A charred cross, a replica of the original, surmounts the stone altar, its burnt blackness in startling contrast to the clean polished wood of most church crosses.

A damp breeze blows through the roofless sanctuary. In the wall behind the altar, two words have been carved into the red sandstone, their letters a foot high: FATHER FORGIVE. Using Jesus' words from the cross, the provost chose to echo in stone the cathedral's postwar mission. Inscribed in the days following the bombing, they seem to point to the men flying the now-silent planes and to the people below as well.

The prayer invokes not human aid but divine will. The petition is only two words. By not adding the word them, the contemporary traveler finds another interpretation: "Father, forgive us."

Coventry's message is a timely one for me, preoccupied with forgiveness as I have never been before. A church in my own life has been metaphorically shattered as destructively as Coventry; anger and distrust have explosively fragmented the worshiping community. Former friends have wielded the mandate to forgive like an ax in the confusion of who has committed wrong.

Perhaps in Coventry I would find hints of what forgiveness is and demands of us. It is not simply forgetting -- the stark presence of the ruined shell prevents that. And, as a sign in large letters reminds visitors, "Forgiveness Is Not Easy." But that says only what forgiveness is not.

I have a flash of anger. What right had the provost to order these words inscribed? It is easy for a cathedral to forgive, for a provost who has not lost a child in the air raid. 'What of those families who suffered deaths and injuries? Disabled survivors still hobble through Coventry. Why extend forgiveness to bombers uncomprehending and unrepentant?

I still feel anger for a church upheaval far away, for betrayal and falsehood. Nursing those grievances, I put forgiveness off till another time

Shortly before I visited Coventry, while staying at a Scottish inn, I encountered a middle-aged tourist who praised Britain's cathedrals and extolled in particular the architectural drama of Coventry's new, postwar cathedral. Over our breakfast at a common table, I asked her what she thought of Coventry's emphasis on forgiveness.

I saw her stiffen as she cut into her eggs. In my sleepy state I realized belatedly that her accent was German. She paused before replying, then said evenly that Dresden, too, was wantonly firebombed. Forgiveness, she suggested, runs two ways, does it not? She implied that the bombings of Coventry and Dresden canceled each other in equivalent blame, as if there were no original fault, no first blow thrown. And we reached an impasse over our breakfast.

Before entering the new cathedral, I pass the former vestries, now, a sign explains, an International Center of Christian Reconciliation, the rebuilding done after the war by young volunteers from Germany "making amends for suffering caused by their parents' generation." Coventry Cathedral, in its first project for reconciliation, helped construct the wing of a hospital in Germany. Its location: Dresden.

Leaving the ruins, I pass under the canopy that links the weathered red shell at a right angle to the modern sanctuary, built between 1954 and 1962 out of the same Staffordshire sandstone.

A clear glass screen seventy feet high and etched with figures of angels, apostles, and prophets serves as the new cathedral's back wall. I peer through it into the lighted nave, a sanctuary offering warmth on a darkening December afternoon. Architect Basil Spence wrote that his desire to design a cathedral stemmed from a wartime incident after D-Day in Normandy: he had seen tanks destroy a beautiful church to kill several German snipers. In postwar England, as a little-known architect, he had submitted his drawing for Coventry's open design competition without "the faintest hope of success."

He received with amazement the news that he had won, later recounting in Phoenix at Coventry":It was lunchtime but I felt I had to go to Saint Paul's Cathedral for a while. I went in and stayed under Christopher Wren's great dome quietly for about an hour. I felt a period of dedication was called for as I had a desperate need to be alone and to meditate quietly."

The first British cathedral built since the Reformation received global publicity. The world peered over his shoulder to see what green shoots he could coax from the ashes.

Spence later recalled that, in the postwar era of disillusionment, the mayor of Coventry had suggested that "acts of faith" were more than ever needed to pierce the gloom. Spence adopted the phrase himself, viewing his design as a response to God. "The new Cathedral Church of Coventry," explained Spence, "is our Act of Faith."

Once inside, I step to a quiet corner in the back of the nave, out of the thin stream of tourists entering in the late afternoon. Ahead of me the cavernous sanctuary soars up to a diagonal grid of concrete vaulting, with spruce laths forming shallow pyramids in between. Except in the slenderness of its tapering columns, the cathedral seems vast. Organ pipes on balconies ascend four stories while the tapestry behind the altar, reputed to be the world's largest at seventy-two feet by thirty-eight feet, depicts the risen Christ on his throne.

I am vaguely cognizant of the niches harboring Coventry's renowned works of art on biblical themes of justice and reconciliation. But what I am unprepared for is the floor-to-ceiling wall of stained glass to my right. Known as the Baptistry Window, it consists of hundreds of panels of blues, reds, and greens that surround a central orb of gradually lightening yellow panels. Even in the dusk of December, the window summons enough light to give the impression that it is lit from within.

Designer John Piper and glassworker Patrick Reyntiens intended to suggest the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit. The abstract pattern conjures up for me a long-buried dream of a mountainous Dantesque ascent into light. I am unprepared for its beauty. I find myself suddenly seated in a pew, having been gently knocked off my feet by light.

I have arrived well in time for Saturday's choral Evensong and planned to sit in one of the pews, but an usher directs me instead to the clergy stalls in the choir. To one side of me sits a white-haired, genial Anglican priest, and a nameplate indicates that I occupy the Bishop of Warwickshire's chair. My fellow parishioners number five, with the choir itself ten times that number. I revel in the intimacy of the gathering, awash in song, prayer, and silence, all under brilliant nave lights that keep the grey of the December afternoon at bay.

Benjamin Britten's War Requiem had its premiere here, shortly after the cathedral's consecration in 1962. The composer linked verses from World War 1 poet Wilfred Owen to the Latin text of the Mass for the Dead, dedicating his work, in Owen's words, to "Whatever shares/The eternal reciprocity of tears."

I look down the dark sanctuary, past its glass screen, to the ruined shell of the medieval cathedral. In days following the bombing, the provost admitted that Christians in Coventry had agonized about how to respond to the hatred caused by the city's destruction. A number of possible options were open to the community. Quoting C.S. Lewis, the provost recalled, "The angels of God hold their breath to see which way we will choose to go."

On the high altar, the crosses of nails and charred beams insist that sacrifice and pain have occurred here, only to be transfigured by God. It is not a message I easily embrace as I look out into the dusk of Coventry. My mind still slips into grudges, rehearsing ripostes, picking at memories like scabs trying to heal.

The bishop of Coventry had urged Basil Spence "to design an altar and build a church around it." But the unremarkable altar, built of black marble and dwarfed by the Graham Sutherland tapestry, seems to me the least imposing part of the new cathedral.

In part the scale of other works draws the eye: the height of the nave, the luminous baptistry window that dwarfs a font of Palestinian limestone at its base, and the tapestry itself of Christ on the throne clothed in white robes.

My attention radiates out to pieces of artwork donated from around the world, each sculpture in itself an act of faith. The images seem less to decorate the cathedral than support it, clarifying biblical messages with tactile directness. There is the carved wooden Christ sunken in wood, given by a former Czech prisoner, as well as a metallic model of the city of Coventry set beneath an oversized, divine-like plumb line. Startlingly impressive is a small chrome sculpture of a head of Christ, eyes closed, wearing a crown of thorns. The sculptor used metal from a car crash that took three lives. I had read of this particular work of art and expected to be repulsed by it. But I find instead that the sculpture, like the cross formed from the cathedral's charred roofbeams, seems to convey an inexhaustible meaning: nothing can separate us from Christ.

As he designed the cathedral, Basil Spence kept in mind the words "Only the very best will do for God." Two small chapels, projecting out into the world, encourage visitors to unite faith and work as Spence himself did.

The slender Chapel of Unity, built in the shape of a ten-sided crusader's tent, extends hope for all Christian denominations to be brought together by common prayer. The Chapel of Industry, composed of clear panes looking out on modern Coventry attempts to shrink the distance between spirit and commerce in daily life.

Like the various sculptures, the chapels nudge visitors to consider how they themselves are to respond with "acts of faith." I look out the glass at the city's evening traffic. Is forgiveness, I ask myself, an act of faith?

The cathedral's ministry extends far into the world. For decades it has sponsored an international network of people devoted to reconciliation. Under the rubric Cross of Nails Ministry, participants have sought to pray, teach, and fund-raise on behalf of projects to reduce conflict in Northern Ireland, South Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Members have met in small gatherings, often committing themselves to a simpler way of life. Active chapters evolved in several countries, notably the United States and Germany (though, ironically, financial constraints recently caused the United Kingdom branch of the Cross of Nails Ministry to disband, with membership now supplied from the Friends of Coventry Cathedral).

"The ministry helped people to come to terms with their enemies and to see a mirror image of themselves in their enemies," says the Reverend Canon Paul Oestreicher, the cathedral's former director of international ministry. Like Coventry itself, Oestreicher's experience with forgiveness transcends the abstract. "My father was Jewish," he explains, "and relatives died in Auschwitz. I had to come to terms with forgiving the German people." Oestreicher chronicles part of that passage in his book The Double Cross whose pages "focus on 'the love that will not let me go.'"

I spend Saturday evening outside the cathedral, walking nearly deserted downtown streets of Coventry where Lady Godiva once rode -- presumably in a warmer month than December -- trying to persuade her nobleman husband to lower his subjects' taxes. Much of the city's current architecture stands in dispiriting contrast with its cathedral. Bleak concrete boxes rise as testament not only to postwar reconstruction but also to prewar urban planning that demolished much of Coventry's medieval charm.

After a supper of fish and chips in a nearby restaurant, I return to my small bed-and-breakfast a fifteen minute walk from the cathedral, just beyond where bombs fell in November 1940, and sleep restlessly.

Early Sunday morning I return to the cathedral, entering the small Chapel of Christ in Gethsemane through a wrought-iron gate shaped like a crown of thorns. On the wall ahead, a dazzling bronze-on-gold relief represents a kneeling angel offering the chalice in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Only a handful of people attend this service of Morning Prayer. In the stillness of the chapel, several thoughts accompany me. It seems that we avoid extending forgiveness for several reasons: first, we worry that we may be opening floodgates, acceding to future injury poured in upon past wrong (although, as C.S. Lewis noted, "there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing"),and, second, less commendably, we hesitate to surrender outrage. It is when we guard grudges like heirlooms that we demand retribution and vindication.

And then, of course, there is memory. The ancient axiom "Forgive and forget" has been modified by the contemporary slogan "Remember and forgive." And yet, if there is a room of forgiveness which I occasionally enter, memory seems to open under me like a trapdoor.

"It is impossible to forgive unless we recognize our own need for forgiveness," suggests Bruderhof pastor Johann Christoph Arnold, "and acknowledge our faults to someone else." As the poet and priest George Herbert warned long ago, "He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven."

Ultimately, the breathed prayer "Father, forgive" may become "Father, forgive. . . me." After the flurry of outrage and accusation, we pause, no less convinced that others have committed wrong, yet down on our own knees in penance.

The choir prepares to process for the Sunday morning Eucharist past chairs that could seat a thousand people barely a quarter filled. As the cathedral's current provost, John Petty, waits in line to begin the processional, I talk with him. He welcomes me and speaks briefly of his predecessor who had ordered the words "Father forgive" engraved.

"Many people seriously criticized him for his call to forgiveness," he admits. We agree that his was a brave response. Visionary as well, he responds, "and terribly difficult."

Huge stone tablets, eight in all, line the sides of the nave. They are engraved, a brochure notes, with "the most profound words spoken by Christ," like verbal stations of the cross. I stand under one that begins, "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest," briefly considering what I would excerpt for such tablets, in this ultimate red-letter edition of the Bible.

Words that have been on my mind (yet curiously absent from these tablets) come from Matthew 6:14. "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." C.S. Lewis insisted unequivocally, "There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord's Prayer: it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don't forgive you will not be forgiven. No part of his teaching is clearer: and there are no exceptions to it." I think of the parable of the unforgiving servant. I hear a harshness to the words, and a terrible truth colors the parable for us who have been forgiven much and who forgive little.

"There is a hard law," noted Alan Paton, "that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive." I have tended to think of forgiveness parsimoniously, as if it were a gift to withhold from others. But here in Coventry forgiveness strikes me more along the lines of a key, given to us by God to open a prison cell locked from inside.

I have a train to catch in a few hours, but before leaving I climb the surviving steeple of the ruined church, up its one hundred eighty winding steps to a parapet that looks out over the grey sea of Coventry.

The spire is the third highest in Britain, and from this crow's nest it is possible to see for miles in all directions. There are few points of the compass where the cathedral's role as reconciler has not been felt -- Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, most notably in Germany itself.

Before retiring as the cathedral's international director, Paul Oestreicher was honored by the German government for his own work in Anglo-German relations. "Through no other sustained aspect of my ministry," he writes in The Double Cross, "could I better demonstrate to myself and to others my understanding of reconciliation and peace." He speaks now of the "prayer and inner process" that allowed him to forgive, adding, "I wasn't a free human being until I came to terms with forgiving the German people."

Corrie Ten Boom, author of The Hiding Place, writes of an incident in Munich after the war. On a lecture tour during which she had preached of the need for forgiveness, she was confronted by a "beaming and bowing" former S.S. jailer of Ravensbruck prison, where her beloved sister perished and she herself barely survived. After the man stretched out his hand, she tried to raise her own hand and could not.

I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

The wind buffets me as I stand in the tower's parapet. Querulously I pick at the fringes of her story, troubled by the image of a "beaming and bowing" guard. Was that contrition? But the guard's demeanor is not her point (and, in any case, as writer and teacher Kyle Pasewark suggests, "repentance is a response to forgiveness, not its precondition").

As practiced by men and women like Paul Oestreicher and Corrie Ten Boom -- and by places like Coventry Cathedral -- forgiveness mutes the objections of bystanders. And perhaps this is a quality of forgiveness. We depend on others who have suffered more deeply to show us the way out from the debris of anger.

From the steeple on this overcast Sunday morning, I take a last view down into the old cathedral where a few figures move about, lost in thought. At noon this coming Friday, and every Friday, visitors will gather around the altar in the roofless nave for a short service that begins with the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation.

"All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," the prayer begins before traversing a confession of the seven deadly sins. Canon Heather Wallace, who has taken part for years in the services "in sun and pouring rain, with two people present or fifty" notes the litany's particular impact in being uttered simultaneously at noon on Fridays throughout the world in conflicted settings. The prayer ends with another echo from St. Paul, quoted as well on signs in the new cathedral: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

In all Britain there is perhaps no better setting than Coventry to reckon with forgiveness. Yet, if the power to forgive comes from God, our ability to forgive begins with prayer. And that can begin anywhere.

In Coventry we confront the paradox that we have postponed that which we profess to pray for each day: ". . . as we forgive those who trespass against us." A tenacious wind carries up sounds of traffic from streets far below. It is time to descend the steeple steps and return home.

A Way in the Wilderness: Men and the Environment

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet

- ‘Inversnaid’, Gerard Manley Hopkins

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