HIS 250: HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA LECTURE 8
HIS 250: HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA LECTURE 8
Lecture 8
Part 4. Religious Transformation from World War II to the New Millennium
Chapter 15. War, Peace, and Religious Renewal
In the 1940s and 1950s, both the nation and its religious institutions endured the trials of war and the fears of fascism and communism. Churches, synagogues, and other religious organizations were tested by the brutal realization of humanity’s inhumanity, by new technological powers of destruction, and by temptations to become instruments or pawns in the Cold War. Amidst the darkness, however, signs of renewal could be seen, such as Billy Graham’s crusades, the feel-good messages of post-war suburbia, and innovative movements of liturgical reform. Renewal and transformation became especially powerful elements among America’s Roman Catholics in the early 1960s.
Wars Around the World
Immediately following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered a war that had engaged most of Europe since 1939 and much of Asia since the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In the midst of America’s involvement in the war, organized religion followed two broad approaches. In the first, ministries offered consolation, guidance, inspiration, and a wide variety of war-related services.
More than 8000 ministers, rabbis, and priests served as chaplains in World War II. Confessions were heard within earshot of the noise of battle, hymns were sung above the roar of battleship engines, sermons were heard in arctic snow and tropical heat, communion was offered in frontline hospitals and last rites within frontline trenches. Chaplains lived in tents, trailers, troop ships, and open fields. Wherever combat soldiers and sailors moved, the uniformed clergy lived or died alongside them. The often heroic sacrifice of military chaplains during the war was illustrated by four chaplains (two Protestants, a Catholic, and a Jew) who died on the Dorchester ship when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1943. The four men stood arm in arm as the ship sank into the Atlantic Ocean, dying along with nearly 700 American soldiers after giving up their own life jackets in an attempt to save others.
A second approach of religion to the war sought to ease war’s inevitable cruelties and severe dislocations. Even before the United States entered the conflict, Quakers and others supported humanitarian efforts abroad in an endeavor to clothe the needy, feed the hungry, and minister to the sick. Quaker representatives in France in 1940 reported the heartbreaking challenges of having to decide life-and death matters such as who should receive the limited supplies of food and clothing. In 1947, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee agreed that the American Friends Service Committee itself should be honored for service rendered all over Europe, as well as in China and India.
The global refugee problem was more severe than any had anticipated or than any could deal with satisfactorily. But the United States had its own refugee problem following Pearl Harbor. On the stated grounds of national security, though the unstated grounds involved racism, the nation decided that most of the Japanese on the West Coast needed to be moved to relocation centers in Idaho, Arizona, or elsewhere in the inland West. More than 100,000 Japanese, the majority of whom were American citizens, spent the war years behind barbed wire and under armed guard, wondering about the worth of their citizenship in a country that continued to view so much through the perspective of race. The help churches were able to provide to these Japanese Americans was not much. (Forty years later, the nation issued an official apology and financial reparations to the Japanese Americans whose lives had been devastated by this policy).
Pacifism, too, had been sacrificed in the course of World War II. Although the 1930s had seen an unprecedented growth in pacifist sentiment among the churches, these views (along with isolationist campaigns to keep America out of wars) quickly faded away after 1941. Yet many religious groups were determined not to be as uncritically supportive of this war (or any other war) as they had been of World War I. War was evil, though sometimes a necessary evil. Many church members agreed that the war could be supported only on the grounds that the injustices that accompanied it might be brought more quickly to an end.
Pacifism did not wholly disappear. Mennonites, members of the Church of the Brethren, and Quakers helped to run Civilian Public Service camps where conscientious objectors could render alternative service, especially in forestry, agriculture, and environmental protection. Even within historic peace churches, claims of conscience were not exercised uniformly. Many chose alternative service, while others agreed to serve in the armed forces. Seventh-day Adventists provided a significant number of objectors during the war, as did some mainline Protestants. While not technically pacifists (since they believed they would participate in God’s future war), Jehovah’s Witnesses declined to participate in this human war and often ended up imprisoned for their refusal.
The vast majority of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews joined in the war in an effort to see that a just and durable peace followed the end of the war. While the Allied forces spoke chiefly in terms of unconditional surrender, many religious and political leaders argued for a higher moral solution. A Presbyterian layman named John Foster Dulles (later secretary of state) headed a group of church leaders in considering the proper grounds for an enduring peace. The World Council of Churches, organized in Amsterdam in 1948, gave support to international relief for refugees and prisoners of war, along with assistance to European churches devastated by the bombings and military occupations. A host of church-related entities also worked tirelessly all around the world, trying to alleviate the harms caused by war as well the conditions that tended to lead to war.
Sometimes the service rendered was personal and immediate, for example a cup of cold milk to a starving child at the edge of the Sahara Desert. Other times the service was more impersonal but more far-reaching, such as demonstrations to farmers in India of fertilizers that could increase food production by over 300 percent. Smallpox inoculations were administered in North Africa, and penicillin protection was provided in the Middle East. The creation of the United Nations in 1945 soon led to other worldwide humanitarian efforts such as the World Health Organization, the Children’s Emergency Fund, and the Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
Not all harms resulted from the military might of nations at war. The extermination in Germany of millions of Jews and others in concentration campus was the product of coldly calculated policies of state. During the war, some warned of Adolf Hitler’s genocidal killing. Between 1936 and 1943, about 150,000 Jewish refugees were settled in the United States (a far smaller number than those who suffered and died in the concentration camps).
Only when allied troops liberated those camps did the full horror of gas chambers and mass burials become evident. The Holocaust sickened the souls of modern men and women, even as it challenged the traditional efforts of theology to account for evil, embodied in such a real-life manner that mocked the very concept of civilization. Elie Wiesel, a childhood survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp who came to the United States in 1956, expressed the idea of God’s silence in the face of such evil. Wiesel argued that, rather than losing faith, we must continue to believe in God as wequestion him. Wiesel further noted that the whole rabbinical tradition of Judaism involved questioning. Other Holocaust survivors insisted that Hitler’s campaign against the Jews must not be allowed any postwar triumphs over Jewish identity and determination.
In 1945, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tested faith and challenged humanity to find a moral power equal to the awesome might of atomic power. With the single bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the United States wrought destruction on a scale that was beyond imagining up until then: 100,000 Japanese killed and another 100,000 mortally wounded. Though an indeterminate number of lives were saved by this power that brought World War II quickly to an end, it also put in the hands of human beings, and many nations, a force that took on a life of its own. Some saw religion as the only possible restraining counterforce that was capable of instructing men and women in the art (and necessity) of peacemaking and arms control.
Richard Fagley, a member in 1945 of the Federal Council of Churches’ Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, wrote after the bombs were dropped on Japan that the only alternative to total world disaster was repentance and regeneration. The oneness of all humankind, rather than the competitiveness among all, must become the guiding principle by which the world is safeguarded and civilization saved. Fagley’s call for a religious solution came as the world entered the atomic age, but questions related to nuclear weapons would become more important in the decades ahead.
Warring for the Hearts and Minds
In the years 1953-1961, a measure of peace and prosperity settled upon the land. During those years, Billy Graham came to prominence, becoming the leading revivalist in the second half of the twentieth century. Emphasizing a gospel of individual repentance and conversion, Graham saw himself as an evangelist above all else–a proclaimer of the good news that Christ died for all and was prepared to redeem or save those that believed. He acknowledged that an evangelist was not primarily a theologian or a social reformer, and that the evangelist’s message was not the whole message of religion to a modern world. But the evangelist’s task and message were excellent places to begin in promoting spiritual matters; after changing the hearts of people, one may proceed to transform the world.
Over the years, Graham grew in his understanding of how much responsibility individual Christians bore for applying religion to large social and political problems. In 1960, he pointed out that faith must express itself in action. While he recognized the social dimension of religion, he argued that reform must begin with the individual. The experience of conversion does not take men or women out of society, but rather it enables them to work as partners with God more powerfully than ever before to reform social ills.
As an adviser to presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, Graham enjoyed an unusual degree of public visibility. His many big-city crusades (or gatherings) drew thousands of people to football stadiums and civic auditoriums They also received great attention as radio and television carried the revival meetings into millions of homes across the country. In addition to being a public representative of religion, Graham was the leader of a new religious conservatism or neo-evangelicalism that was to play an increasingly prominent place in the affairs of the nation. With Graham’s support, the magazine Christianity Today was launched in 1956, which gave his movement visibility and respectability. Neo-evangelicals were no longer perceived as fringe critics of culture but were now regarded as responsible defenders of revivalism, and religion itself, to enhance personal and corporate life. Through a network of activities and agencies, Graham helped create an alternative between the older versions of fundamentalism and liberalism.
No other revivalist enjoyed the popularity that Graham did in the 1950s and 1960s. But some preachers, in their own churches or in television studios, won audiences of enormous dimension. They did so by proclaiming a message of self-confidence, returning to and extending the messages of inner peace and outward prosperity that had developed at the turn of the twentieth century. Norman Vincent Peale, a Dutch Reformed pastor in New York City, astounded many with the success of his 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking, which gave the advice to “believe in yourself.” Peale argued that developed habits of self-affirmation can lead to successful achievement–to health, wealth, and happiness.
In a similar way, Monsignor Fulton Sheen declared that the conversion experience makes “somebodies” out of “nobodies” and improves health by curing the ills of a disordered and restless mind. Conversion cures depression and enables the soul to live in constant consciousness of God’s presence. In his popular television programs, Sheen inspired confidence by his mere presence and steady assurance, promising a kind of calm that could only come from faith.
In a great deal of the teaching of Peale and Sheen, as well as in inspirational writing such as that of Rabbi Joshua Liebman, the emphasis lay more on changing one’s internal attitude than on changing the external world. Emphasis often rested upon what religion can do for the individual (for comfort and healing), rather than civic engagement and social service. Other religious bodies in this same period approached religion much more in terms of criticizing and reshaping political and social structures, as well as dedication to causes beyond individual lives and even beyond the community or country.
In the 1950s, many liberal church members found themselves under attack as communists, or at least communist sympathizers or those deceived by communists. While some anti-communists sincerely feared the overthrow of the American system, others used that fear to weaken the forces of political and religious liberalism. Best known is Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, who fostered exaggerated anxieties of a communist takeover and created an atmosphere where accusations against suspected subversives were rampant.
In 1953, J. B. Matthews, chief investigator for the House of Representatives Committee Probing Un-American Activities, publicly charged that since World War II the Communist Party had enlisted the support of at least seven thousand clergymen as either party members or sympathizers. Without trying to prove the validity of his claim, he declared that the social gospel in Protestant theological seminaries had drawn clergymen to defect to communism. His claim suggested that passion for social justice must be put in check, and patriotism must be the highest concern, in order for accusations of communism to be avoided.
One person who was frequently accused was Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, who served as president of the Federal Council of Churches from 1944 to 1946 and president of the World Council of Churches for six years after that. The Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives repeatedly implied that Oxnam was either a communist, or someone who was deceived into allowing the communists to use him for their causes. Finally, in 1953, Bishop Oxnam demanded to be heard before the committee.
After affirming his unwavering Christian faith and complete rejection of atheism and materialism, Oxnam severely rebuked the committee for making unverified claims and taking no responsibility for either these claims or the untold damage caused by the claims. The bishop than stated that the churches have done more to destroy the communist threat to faith and freedom than all investigating committees combined.
When Senator McCarthy was formally censured by the U.S. Senate in 1954, his popularity and influence quickly faded, along with that of the many investigators, critics, and opportunists who followed him. The effect on American religion, and especially upon liberal Protestantism, was to weaken its moral leadership in areas of social justice, where such leadership was critically required. An atmosphere of peace and prosperity eventually led to a sense of complacency regarding social injustices and inequities.
Religious Renewal
For two decades following World War II, mainstream religion prospered. Church membership rose to nearly 65 percent of the national population, its highest proportion ever. Among Catholics, weekly attendance at worship reached about 60 percent. Financial contributions to churches and synagogues increased steadily to billions of dollars. In 1957, the U. S. Bureau of the Census conducted a poll that discovered that 96 percent of the nation’s citizens identified with a religious tradition, whether or not they were members or attendees (including 70 million as Protestant, 30 million as Catholic, 4 million as Jewish, and a few other categories).
The two decades following the Second World War were growth years for the major denominations and many of the minor ones as well. Religion also enjoyed a good deal of public confidence, as measured by the regular Gallup polls that inquired about such things. The most obvious sign on the American landscape of renewal was a burst of ecclesiastical building, using new technologies and architectural forms that strove to reflect the current styles of building (as older church styles were seen as suggesting that God did not exist today).
In the 1950s, therefore, the United States witnessed the designing and constructing of many sophisticated, contemporary church buildings. For example, the Priory of St. Gregory the Great was built in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, with sheet copper for the roofs, concrete slabs for the walls, and redwood board for much of the interior, creating a stunning image of innovation. The First Presbyterian Church of Cottage Grove, Oregon, on the other hand, avoided all traditional symbols such as the use of an arch, steeple, or stained glass, instead using simplicity in both its interior and external design. In Bloomington, Indiana, the First Baptist Church intended its new structure to partake of modern materials and modern methods of construction, providing a simple and meaningful place of worship and a Christian symbol that would speak of the search for God in the forms and with the materials of the current time.
At the same time that American religious communities were exploring new architectural forms, they participated in a liturgical renewal as well. Liturgy (which literally means the work of the people) gathers worshipers together in a collective ritual of celebration. Through liturgy, Jews honor the exodus from Egypt and many other events in the Jewish past. In a similar way, Christian liturgy centers on remembrances of things past, notably the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. In the 1950s and beyond, more conscious attention was given to the place of such remembrances, even among groups that thought of themselves as non-liturgical. Many denominations also used prayers and hymns of other denominations, and the Roman Catholic activity of the early 1960s was particularly prominent.
In 1960, the voting public of the country for the first time elected a Roman Catholic as its president: John F. Kennedy. Religion was prominently under discussion in this presidential campaign, as it had with Alfred Smith’s campaign thirty years earlier. In the generation since then, pluralism had become more acceptable or at least more obvious, and the realities of nativism (preference for native-born Americans and standard American customs) and anti-Catholic bigotry had become less acceptable or at least less blatant. Yet Kennedy found the religious question pressed upon him continually during his campaign, given concerns that he would be influenced by the pope (an authority outside the United States).
Before the election, Kennedy dealt directly with the fact of his Catholicism before the Society of American Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C., before the press in Los Angeles after he won the Democratic nomination, and before the Ministerial Association in Houston. To each audience, he made the point that, should he become president, he was committed to upholding and defending the U.S. Constitution, including its First Amendment guarantees regarding freedom of religion. He also argued that he wished no votes to be cast either for or against him merely because he was Catholic. He further noted that Roman Catholics had served in every other conceivable civil capacity without questions concerning their religion being raised.
Kennedy observed that the presidency in the United States was not an instance of rule by one person. No president could ignore Congress, the courts, or voters. Though he expressed concern that anti-Catholic bigotry might prevail in the election, such bigotry had lessened sufficiently to permit his election in 1960.
Two years before Kennedy’s election, an Italian churchman who took the title John XXIII was elected pope, serving from 1958 to 1963 and proving even more revolutionary than America’s election of a Catholic president. Though he was in his late seventies and chosen as a presumably safe, compromise pope, he startled many by his own openness as well as his intent to create a more open church. Through his personality, common touch, and willingness to leave the confines of the Vatican, he inspired affection and trust around the world. During his service, he labored to help his church loosen the hold of the Vatican’s entrenched bureaucracy.
Two major writings demonstrated his spirit to embrace the modern world rather than condemn it. In 1961, he wrote a letter that addressed itself to social, economic, and political questions in light of 20th century concerns and demands. He probed the standards for justice and equity in an industrialized world, searched for ways to assure a family life that would be decent and humane, defended social insurance and social security as appropriate means for reducing imbalances among social classes, and spoke on behalf of an improved rural life through government provisions for essentials such as pure drinking water, good housing, decent roads, and quality education. He further had concern for the relationship between economically advantaged nations and those in the process of development.
His second writing, issued in 1963, attracted even more attention, both due to its topic as well as because the pope went out of his way to address it to those beyond the Roman Catholic community, to all people of good will. Beginning with a recognition of basic human rights, John XXIII urged that all governments provide a charter of fundamental human rights incorporated into their constitutions. The pope also urged a cessation of the arms race, an obliteration of all lingering traces of racism, and a limitation on the expanding power of individual nations. He argued that worldwide problems required worldwide authority, perhaps a world government, or at least a greatly strengthened United Nations.
John XXIII is best remembered for calling the modern world’s most important church council: Vatican II, which met from 1962 to 1965. This was the most ambitious council of the Roman Catholic Church in centuries, as it made an effort to come to terms with the non-Catholic world, the non-Christian world, and the secular and pluralistic world. Though the pope died before the council completed its work, he did see the Vatican opening to the outside world. Vatican II led to the publication of sixteen official documents, which brought great changes to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray introduced into Vatican II what was generally called the American document—the “Declaration on Religious Liberty.” Murray defended the document and persuaded the majority that the time had come for the Catholic Church to recognize the reality and desirability of religious freedom. In addition to being symbolically important, the document also had substantive value. The church now recognized the inappropriateness of coercion in matters of conscience. The council agreed that the exercise of religion consisted of voluntary and free acts to set a life toward God; no human power could command or prohibit acts of this kind. The council further acknowledged that the rights of free assembly and freedom of worship were required by human nature and the nature of religion.
Vatican II did much more than issue a pronouncement in favor of religious freedom. It also revised the liturgy so that a far wider use of the language of the people replaced the mandatory use of Latin. It also revised the Catholic worship service to more clearly show the purpose of its several parts and the connection between them. In addition, it recognized other Christians (non-Catholics) as truly brothers and sisters rather than heretics. Special effort was made to soften the antagonism between the Western and Eastern churches. The council further removed the notion that all Jews past and present were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. It affirmed God’s all-embracing love that extends to all people, and it denounced anti-Semitism.
While Vatican II could not address every issue that faced the Roman Catholic Church, it revealed a new spirit of dialogue and mutual respect and new courage in confronting the problems of its own history and the world’s history. Vatican II sought to modernize the Catholic Church, making it relevant for the current time. Vatican II set a model for religious renewal, which was imitated by some and scorned by others. While some Roman Catholics broke away afterward, preferring to leave the Latin worship unchanged, most American churchgoers accepted the fresh perspective and challenges offered by the council.
Chapter 16. The Courts, the Schools, the Streets
In the years following World War II, the powerful presence of religion in the nation was obvious even to secular Americans. Religion had influence in numerous public places: the daily press, political campaigns, public schools, protests, calls for constitutional amendments, and legal battles. Courts were crowded as religious partisans cried out for justice and fairness. From the perspective of litigation, the nation had entered a new era of conflict over religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
For the first 150 years of the nation’s existence, religious issues rarely reached the Supreme Court. Beginning in the 1940s, however, religion cases increased in both frequency and difficulty over the following decades. The public divided sharply over one judicial decision after another, and the court justices were rarely much closer to agreement. More and more it appeared that religion in America was a matter for the courts.
There were several reasons for this dramatic increase in litigation. First, the Supreme Court in a 1940 case decided that the First Amendment was applicable to the states; in other words, states no less than the federal government itself were bound to respect the free exercise of religion and avoid any establishment of religion. Second, by World War II the ever-growing pluralism of the country had become so evident that it was impossible to pretend all citizens believed and behaved alike. Third, specific organizations helped bring religion cases to the highest court in order to test the protections and limits of the of the First Amendment with respect to religion. Fourth, the federal Constitution itself became increasingly the symbol of national unity as well as the source of both goodness and truth; citizens turned more and more often to the Constitution for direction in the morally complex world. Finally, liberal demands for a more thoroughly secular state reached a critical point by the 1960s; concerns about numerous religious matters were finally able to get a continuous hearing.
The Supreme Court in each decade of the 1970s and 1980s heard more church-state cases than in the years from 1790 to 1940 put together. Further, issues once decided continued to appear in slightly different forms or were decided again with surprisingly different results. Just as the Court, American society searched for a clear path for a viable relationship between religion and public life.
Cases of Conscience
The “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment has been called upon many times to protect behavior guided by conscience and shaped or determined by religion. No group in America’s history has done more to clarify the meaning of the free exercise of religion than the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have pressed their claims through the legal system many times. Members of this group have had confrontations with law enforcement and judicial agencies numerous times over matters such as preaching in public parks, distributing religious literature, trespassing, and failing to obtain a municipal license. Two famous cases attracted the most attention, as they concerned the requirement that the salute and Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag be offered as a daily exercise in public schools.
In 1940, the U.S Supreme Court heard the Minersville School District v. Gobitis case that arose from the refusal of two Jehovah’s Witnesses children (William and Lilian Gobitis), to salute the flag and join in the Pledge of Allegiance each school day. Their refusal was based on their denomination’s belief that this action was idolatry (honoring an image and essentially having a God before Jehovah). The group had come to a similar conclusion in 1930s Germany, when it decided that the salute to Hitler was a form of idolatry. State courts in America who heard such cases regularly decided against the Jehovah’s Witnesses or dismissed the case, deciding that there was no substantial question of religious freedom.
In 1940, the Supreme Court (by a vote of eight to one) ruled in a similar way–that the requirement imposed by the Pennsylvania school district was constitutional. Justice Felix Frankfurter described the importance of the flag as the symbol of national unity. On the other hand, Justice Harlan Stone dissented from the majority view, declaring that the very essence of civil and religious liberty was the freedom from compulsion to think and speak in a way that was untrue to one’s religion. Frankfurter prevailed in the case.
There were two results of this decision against the Jehovah’s Witnesses that quickly became apparent. First, popular resentment against the group grew as wartime patriotism grew stronger. Members of the group were victims of mob violence all across the country. Many schools also added the formal requirement to salute the flag (if they did not previously have this requirement), making public school attendance increasingly problematic for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Second, legal scholars, religious leaders, editorial writers, and others joined together to condemn the 1940 decision as undemocratic, creating a burden on this widely persecuted minority. It soon became clear that several members of the Court were having second thoughts.
In 1943, the Court agreed to hear a similar case arising from West Virginia. But the results were vastly different. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Court reversed its earlier finding in an eight-to-one decision. Speaking for the Court, Justice Robert Jackson agreed that national unity was vital, yet compulsion should not be used to achieve unity. No official should prescribe a correct view in politics, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to make confessions or take actions that concern such matters. While Justice Frankfurter wrote a dissent, he did not prevail in this case.
Religious minorities also helped broaden the understanding of free exercise with respect to the many Sunday laws on the books of most towns east of the Mississippi River. In this instance, Orthodox Jews and Seventh-day Adventists led the judicial battles. For these two groups, the Sabbath began at sundown on Friday morning, not at sunrise on Sunday morning. Orthodox Jews, who closed their shops on Saturday as a religious requirement, were also required to close their shops on Sunday as a legal requirement, and thus suffered economic penalties not faced by those who accepted Sunday as the Sabbath. In 1961, the Court heard two cases that challenged the validity of the Sunday closing laws. Chief Justice Earl Warren in both cases argued that the laws were more part of general welfare regulation than a sign of sectarian favoritism, and that the laws met the tests of constitutionality, only having an indirect burden on the free exercise of religion.
In the first case (McGowan v. Maryland), Justice William Douglas dissented sharply, pointing out that the state had no right to make protesting citizens refrain from doing innocent acts on Sunday, merely to avoid offending sentiments of Christian neighbors. In the second case (Brownfield v. Brown), Justice Potter Stewart dissented, calling the law a cruel choice that requires Orthodox Jews to choose between their religious faith and economic survival.
In the case of Sherbert v. Verner, two years later, the Court decided that a Seventh-Day Adventist who had been denied unemployment benefits for refusing to work on Saturday was entitled to such benefits. Justice William Brennan argued that to hold otherwise would be to force a person to choose between following a religion and accepting work. Justice Stewart agreed with the Court’s opinion in this instance, arguing that the Constitution commands the protection of religious freedom for everyone.
In America’s history, the delicacy of the matter of conscience has been most apparent in the many cases relating to military conscription and service. As long as the nation has been involved in war, it has wrestled with the issue of conscientious objection to war and sometimes to any involvement in a war effort. In the 1960s, however, the problem was greatly aggravated by the duration and unpopularity of the Vietnam War and the widespread refusal of young men either to register for the draft or to accept conscription into the armed forces. The Court now had the task of trying to interpret the language of Congress in its selective service acts, and in this debate about legislative language and intent, the significance of religious conscience was at stake.
In the 1965 case of United States v. Seeger, the Court explored the breadth of the word religion, for Congress had specified exemption from the military draft would be granted only to those who, due to religious belief, were opposed to participation in war in any form. Five years later, however, the Court (in Welsh v. United States) began to pull buck, as the justices divided over the question of how broadly the matter of conscience could be interpreted. They questioned whether conscientious objection always had a religious base, whether one could object only to a particular war (rather than war in general) on conscientious grounds, and how the decision was to be made between the requirements of national interest on the one hand and the protections of free exercise of religion on the other. A majority of the Court decided that people should be exempted from military service due to matters of conscience, spurred by moral or religious beliefs.
However, the minority of the Court felt that this decision was taking the language of Congress and the Constitution too far, making the privilege of religion extend to every conceivable sincere belief. A year later, the Court pulled back even more, holding that not all dissent and disagreement about war (specifically the Vietnam War) involved a truly conscientious objection.
The Supreme Court justices, like Americans more generally, had the dilemma of taking the matter of national solidarity with the utmost seriousness, while respecting the right of all Americans to the free exercise of religion that often conflicts with the apparent interest of the state. Holding these competing principles together in a proper relationship has long been a great constitutional balancing act.
The Schools, Public and Private
In public schools, the issue with respect to religion has been primarily curricular: what can be taught or recited in the classroom. In private schools, the issue with respect to religion has been primarily financial: what can be paid for in the sectarian or parochial school by the tax monies of all citizens. Both issues have proved troublesome to the courts and have aroused widespread public passion and involvement in a way that few other policy questions have managed to do in times of peace.
In public schools, recent controversy has most intensely involved the issues of prayer and Bible reading, and with creationism (creation science). Despite the long history of prayer and Bible reading in schools, it was not until the 1960s that the U. S. Supreme Court dealt directly with these practices.
In 1962, the case of Engel v. Vitale concerned the recital of a prescribed prayer, written by the regents of the state, that was required in every public school classroom in New York. The surprising court decision, which was unanimous, was that such a practice was unconstitutional and must therefore cease. The public outcry condemning the decision was enormous.
The majority opinion, delivered by Justice Hugo Black, stated that the New York practice violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, given that the state was engaged in promoting an affirmation of divine faith and supplication for the blessings of God. After reviewing the history of religious freedom in America, Black acknowledged that the nation’s religious heritage was rich and vital, and the Court’s decision showed no hostility toward religion. On the contrary, the First Amendment and Court decision aimed to put an end to government control of religion and prayer and not destroy either. Government should abstain from writing or sanctioning official prayers, leaving that purely religious function to the people themselves and those they look to for religious guidance.
Large segments of the public cried out that the decision was antireligious, atheistic, and perhaps even inspired by communism. Political figures generally condemned the decision (though President Kennedy was an exception). Many diverse religious leaders also expressed outrage (including Billy Graham).
On the other hand, several Protestant theologians praised the opinion for protecting the integrity of religious conscience and the proper function of religious and governmental institutions. Baptist spokespeople from both north and south approved of the decision, though acknowledging the criticism at the grassroots level. Many Jewish organizations joined together to file a brief in opposition to the use of the prescribed prayer. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared that the decision was good, as it reaffirmed the separation of church and state, which was basic to the nation.
The following year, the Court (in the Abington v. Schempp case) went on to say that ritual Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in the public schools were likewise unconstitutional. In this case, the Court made a clear distinction between the practice of religion on the one hand and the study of religion on the other; the former was clearly unconstitutional so far as governmental agencies or schools were concerned, but the latter was appropriate and should be encouraged. The Bible and religion could be studied, but religious exercises in schools were seen as a violation of the First Amendment.
Reactions to these two major Supreme Court judgments took a variety of forms. Many school districts continued, as before, with daily prayers and reading of the Bible. Others complied with the rulings. Still others tried in some way to restrict the power of the Court; one Texas congressman even introduced a bill that would empower Congress to override any ruling of the Court with which it disagreed. The most sustained reaction, which continued for decades, was to propose an amendment to the Constitution that would negate the 1962 and 1963 Court decisions.
Soon after these decisions, about 150 different amendment proposals were put forward in Congress, and many more suggestions were offered outside the legislative halls. Congressman Frank Becker gathered much support for an amendment that would make prayer and Bible reading in public schools or government places constitutional, if participation is on a voluntary basis. But Congressman Emmanuel Celler held hearings before his House Judiciary Committee that showed much public resistance to such an amendment, including of major religious bodies. Becker’s amendment never came to a vote.
In the Senate, Everett Dirksen introduced a similar amendment that did come to a vote in September 1966. It was narrowly defeated, but the cause remained alive. Other amendments were proposed in the 1970s and 1980s, including one by President Ronald Reagan that said that individual or group prayers in public schools or other institutions should not be prohibited, though participation was not to be required. Though the amendment had wide support, it did not receive the required two-thirds vote for a constitutional amendment.
Since the 1980s, there have continued to be conflicts over prayer in the public schools. Highly publicized cases have emerged involving student-led prayer before football games as well as organized prayer at school assemblies such as graduation ceremonies. The issue has come to center on the extent to which student-conducted prayer is considered a voluntary rather than an officially sanctioned activity. Consensus over how to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable devotional activities in the public schools has been difficult to reach.
The other religious contest in which public schools have been involved concerns the curriculum itself: required or recommended books, philosophies followed, and courses of study all students are obliged to pursue. Some school districts have engaged in censorship on religious grounds. Other districts have been presented with parental petitions to excuse their children from certain required courses, to permit home instruction, or to create a separate curriculum. The most heated debates have centered on science courses in which evolution is taught not as theory but as fact, with no alternative explanations for the origins of life offered.
The alternative most frequently proposed has been a religious explanation of those origins, such as explanations based on the biblical book of Genesis and bearing the name creationism. In January of 1982, the U. S. district judge in Arkansas declared a law titled Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science to be in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, arguing that it amounted to government sponsorship and support for a particular sectarian point of view.
Afterward, the U. S. Supreme Court was asked to consider an even older Arkansas law that prohibited teachers in public schools and universities from teaching any theory suggesting that humans evolved from some other form of life. The Court agreed unanimously that the 1928 law was defective, since it advanced the narrow religious interest that saw the book of Genesis as the correct teaching regarding human origins and amounted to religious favoritism, rather than neutrality.
In 1986 and 1987, a creation-science initiative from the state of Louisiana was the subject of Supreme Court argument and action as another balanced treatment law came up for review. In Edwards v. Aguillard, the Court said that the history of legislative action in Louisiana clearly demonstrated that its purpose was to give advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution. Its constitutional defectiveness involved advancing a specific religious doctrine. Two dissenters argued that the law also had a secular basis that must be recognized.
Judicial rulings have repeatedly gone against creationism, though not always unanimously. One consequence of the public discussion has been a new awareness that Darwinism is indeed only a theory, though admittedly the highly favored theory of the worldwide scientific community. Another consequence has been to arouse among certain groups more resentment against the public schools, with a number of parents, on religious grounds, turning to private education or home schooling. But private education also has involved much litigation and discussion about the separation of church and state.
Within private education, the leading issues remained financial. Money issues took a large variety of forms. The Supreme Court felt it necessary to invent a new set of guidelines to determine whether or not the First Amendment establishment clause was being violated. Yet the simple prohibition from Congress establishing religion proved inadequate for contemporary questions regarding textbook purchases, salary subsidies, construction loans, tax credits, voucher plans, and other financial help.
Faced with numerous cases, the Court asked if a particular law mainly benefited the child or the church school, if the law had a prevailingly secular purpose, if the effect of the law was to advance or inhibit religion (or be neutral in regard to religion), if the administration of the law required government to become overly entangled with religion, and if such a law was likely to unify the population, or divide it through religious disagreement. Given these questions, the court had difficulty in deciding cases or reaching unanimity in its decisions.
The 1947 case of Everson v. Board of Education is famous for several reasons. First, it explicitly applied the Establishment Clause to the states (through the Fourteenth Amendment). Second, with its five-to-four decision, it began a tradition of a much-divided court in cases related to religious schools. Third, it used the strongest separationist language imaginable yet decided in favor of a practice that seemed to some the opposite of separation in matters of church and state. The case involved a New Jersey law that authorized school districts to use public transportation (rather than school buses), reimbursing children for the bus fares (including children in one township that rode public buses to parochial schools).
Justice Hugo Black, speaking for the majority of five, concluded the Court’s opinion with the argument that the New Jersey law did not breach the separation of church and state. The dissenters, in contrast, argued that the principle of keeping these two areas separate was the main issue at stake, rather than how much money was being spent to transport children to parochial schools.
Much debate over such issues lay ahead in the 1960s-1980s. The Court divided again and again, and state legislatures tried repeatedly to find other means for financial assistance to parochial schools. In a New York case in 1968, a majority of six justices agreed that a state law that would lend textbooks free of charge to all students in grades 7-12 (including parochial school students) was constitutional. Dissenters called this law a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Six justices decided the law was constitutional and would stand.
In the 1974 Meek v. Pittenger case, from Pennsylvania, the Court divided once again six to three, but this time the majority moved in the direction of restricting the use of public monies for parochial schools. Helping with textbooks was ruled acceptable, but helping with other services was not acceptable. Several justices concurred in part but dissented in part.
The division of the Court reflected the division of the larger society. Public schools in the 1960s and beyond came under increasing criticism from many segments of society. Meanwhile, private schools ceased to exist mainly for Roman Catholics, as many traditional supporters of public schools now began to develop schools of their own, for reasons involving religion, morals, safety, quality of education, or race or social class. By the 1980s, efforts to find more suitable means for publicly supporting private education had won some significant victories.
One notable and surprising victory pertained to a Minnesota case the Court decided in 1983. In Mueller v. Allen, the Court examined a state law that permitted all parents to deduct from their taxes between five and seven hundred dollars per child for tuition, textbooks, and transportation to any school, public or private. Judges were divided five to four, with the majority finding the Minnesota law permissible because any aid that reached the parochial schools was a result of individual parental decision and did not involve state approval. Dissenters observed that most of the private school students attended schools that included religious instruction, that no effort had been made to restrict the public monies to secular (rather than religious) uses, and that the decision in this case contradicted earlier judgments of the Court.
The justices recognized that they followed no clear direction, and decisions were likely to fluctuate from case to case. While one justice confessed that judicial decisions often must seem arbitrary, another claimed that the Court sacrifices clarity for flexibility. Political changes, including the appointment of new justices, aggravated the difficulties.
Matters of Life and Death
Americans have encountered even more divisive controversies than those described above. While the controversies tended to be more personal and private, their resolution was repeatedly sought in very public ways. Contending parties have even debated in the streets, where violence sometimes has replaced debate.
State and federal courts have been required to deal with laws concerning contraceptive devices and birth control instruction. They have had to decide on cases involving euthanasia, made more complex by the modern technical ability to sustain biological life long after life of any discernable quality has ceased. In the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, courts have had to remove a child temporarily from the custody of parents so that a life-saving blood transfusion might be administered (as Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid blood transfusions). In groups that practice faith healing, if a person died without conventional medical assistance being made available, questions of criminal neglect demanded legal resolution. Numerous other social issues have emerged as subjects of religious debate and disagreement.
One subject has surpassed all others in the degree of public attention it has received and the vigor it has aroused on each side. Abortion is not a church-state question in the sense that the First Amendment provides the grounds for judicial opinion, but it is a religious question in the sense that churches and religious associations have acted repeatedly as antagonists, litigants, or lobbyists. Some observers have referred to this issue as a religious war or as the critically divisive issue in a larger culture war.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the move to eliminate criminal penalties for abortion gained much religious support particularly among Protestants and Jews. A professor at the Episcopal Theological School led much pro-choice reform, aided by the official statements of such denominations as the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. Many evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants joined the pro-life effort, as did the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the Roman Catholic Church has been seen as the most consistent and powerful opponent of abortion.
In 1973, the Supreme Court at last agreed to hear an abortion case, and the result in Roe v. Wade increased the social and religious divisions, becoming a rallying point for both critics and supporters of the Court’s decision. The Court began by recognizing that this was an issue of utmost complexity and deepest conviction. It then reviewed historical attitudes regarding abortion from the ancient world up through English Common Law and early American law. It also evaluated the official pronouncements of such agencies as the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the Roman Catholic Church, the National Council of Churches, and others. As a result of this extensive review, the Court decided that in the first trimester of pregnancy, the decision about abortion must be left to the medical judgment of the attending physician. In the second trimester, the state may, if it so chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways reasonably related to maternal health. And in the final trimester, the state may, if it so chooses, regulate or even prohibit abortion except where it is judged necessary for the life and health of the mother.
One of the two dissenters in this case, Justice William Rehnquist argued that the issue should be left to the states rather than the federal government. This dissenting opinion gained the support of conservatives, who also criticized the involvement of the federal government in subsidizing and funding abortions. Legislative lobbying, constitutional amendment proposals, and popular demonstrations occurred after the court case. President Reagan identified closely with the pro-life cause.
In presidential campaigns, as well as in state and local races, abortion has remained a controversial issue, for some the single issue on which to base a vote. In appointments to the Supreme Court, as well as to all lower federal courts, the prospective jurist’s views on abortion often overshadow everything else. Efforts for more constructive dialogue have focused on areas of agreement such as preventing teen pregnancies and reducing the number of abortions, in an attempt to bring people together for civil discussion. However, the abortion debate remains a difficult religious and social issue with far greater potential to divide than unify.
Native Americans and Religious Freedom
One of the most important and contentious church-state debates in recent decades has concerned the religious freedom of Native Americans, especially the freedom to use the cactus peyote (a hallucinogenic drug) in religious ceremonies. Just as missionaries and government officials felt they had virtually succeeded in their programs of assimilation and conquest, a new religious movement, centering on the ritual ingestion of peyote, came to prominence among Plains Indians at the end of the 19th century and soon spread much more widely. Peyote had long been in use among tribes in Mexico and Texas, employed in healing ceremonies, visionary practices, and divination (or foretelling the future). When the peyote movement took off among tribes across the western United States after 1900, missionaries responded with alarm. Native practitioners claimed that peyotism was closely allied with Christianity, producing a Native American Church, but this claim only aroused the anger of missionaries, who considered the use of peyote to be sacrilegious (or even to constitute a false religion).
As early as 1897 and increasingly by the 1910s, missionaries and their supporters lobbied for legislation to suppress the peyote religion. Amidst the temperance crusades and the prohibition agenda that sought to make the use of alcohol illegal, the use of peyote was a clear target for reformers, who were sure it was more dangerous to the moral and physical well-being of its partakers than even alcohol. Yet Native Americans, with the help of allies such as the anthropologist James Mooney, held off legislation at the time, leading a campaign to incorporate the movement as a denominational organization and demonstrate that the moral tone of the Native American Church was in keeping with wider religious values of the day. The supportive commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs consolidated the victory in 1934 when he declared that no interference with native religious life or ceremonial expression would be tolerated, insisting on constitutional liberty for natives in religious matters. The Native American Church grew rapidly, becoming the most successful pan-Indian religious movement of the 20th century and now counting about 25 percent of Native Americans among its followers.
Those early successes did not settle the church-state matter, however. In the 1960s, as leaders of the counterculture gave drug use increasing status and often drew on Native American traditions to justify their own experimentation, questions about the legitimacy of the Native American Church were raised again. In 1962, three Navajo Indians in California were arrested for using peyote as part of their religious ritual. Found guilty of violating state law prohibiting drug use, they appealed to the California Supreme Court. The court in 1964 found in favor of the Navajos and their religious freedom, recognizing that, in the pluralistic society of the United States, pressures for religious conformity must be resisted. Interest in permitting free religious expression outweighed interest in enforcing laws against narcotics.
Legal opinion tended to side with the Native American Church in the 1970s. In 1978, the U. S. Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, declaring it official U. S. policy to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and native Hawaiian, including access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites.
Despite this act of Congress, the peyote sacrament in the Native American Church became again the object of much legal dispute in the 1980s and 1990s. In Oregon, Alfred Smith, a counselor in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center and member of the Native American Church, was fired from his job in 1984 when he refused to stop participating in the peyote rituals. Denied unemployment benefits by the Oregon Employment Division as a result of state laws prohibiting the use of certain controlled substances, including peyote, Smith countered with a lawsuit claiming that the constitutional guarantee to the free exercise of religion had been violated. Smith won in the Oregon Supreme Court, but the Employment Division v. Smith case then ended up before the Supreme Court in 1990, where Justice Anthony Scalia led the court in a five-to-four decision to reverse the lower court’s ruling. The decision affirmed that the state was under no obligation to create an exemption to regulations on controlled substance because they indirectly impeded religious practice.
The decision shocked and stirred members of the Native American Church, but it also rallied other religious leaders and civil libertarians to demand, in contrast to the judgment, that a state must defend a compelling interest in making laws which impede religious practice. The court decision immediately intensified the legislative conflicts, which resulted in Congress passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 that explicitly restored the standard for the protection of religious liberty and free exercise that was in effect before the Smith case. However, the Supreme Court declared this act unconstitutional in a six-to-three decision in the 1997 City of Boerne, Texas v. Flores case, arguing that Congress had overreached its legislative powers. The conflict continues, with many Native American Church members increasingly turning to state legislatures to continue their fight for the guarantee of religious freedom.
Primary Text 8: From “What Ten Years Have Taught Me” in Christian Century, February 17, 1960 (by Billy Graham)
What ten years have taught me | The Christian Century
The lessons of this decade have been staggering. Many of my original concepts and convictions have become more certain; others have been amplified, enlarged and changed.
First, I recognize more clearly today than I did ten years ago the narrow limits assigned to the evangelist. I take as my definition of evangelism the classic one formed by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Committee of 1918: “To evangelize is so to present Christ Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Savior and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of His Church.”
One of the best definitions of evangelism is that formulated by representatives of 30 Protestant communions at the 1946 meeting in Columbus, Ohio, of the executive committee of the old Federal Council of Churches. It reads: “Evangelism is the presentation of the good news of God in Jesus Christ so that men are brought through the power of the Holy Spirit to put their trust in God, accept Jesus Christ as their Savior from the guilt and power of sin, to follow and serve Him as their Lord in the fellowship of the church and in the vocations of the common life.”
The evangel is the good news that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The word evangelism comes from the word evangel, which means “good news” or “gospel.” The evangelist is the keryx, or the proclaimer of this message. The Scriptures indicate that when Christ gave gifts to his church, one of the gifts was that of the evangelist (Eph. 4:11). Philip was called an evangelist, and Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist. Yet some in the church refuse—to the detriment of the church—to recognize this particular gift that has been given to some men.
The message of the evangelist is “narrow.” It does not spread-eagle out into the broad ramifications of a total theology or sociology. Contrary to the opinion of some, the evangelist is not primarily a social reformer, a temperance lecturer or a moralizer. He is simply a keryx, a proclaimer of the good news, which in capsule form is “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; . . . was buried, and . . . rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures” (I Cor. 15:3f). This terse proclamation stretches over the broad frame of man’s basic need. It declares that man is a sinner, that Christ is the only Savior, that Christ lives evermore and that the Scriptures are trustworthy. . . .
A second lesson of the past decade: I have come to face realistically the results of mass evangelism. I am convinced that mass evangelism is not the most ideal method of evangelism. There are many methods that the church can effectively use, and mass evangelism is only one of them. Yet it is an important one.
My associates and I have spent a great deal of time and effort in studying the results of our crusades. Personally I am sick of statistics. How can one translate a reconciled home, a transformed drunkard or a new selfless attitude into a cold statistic? The only reason we keep statistics at all is for the sake of accuracy. If no statistics were kept, the press would exaggerate out of all proportion the number of those who respond to the appeal. For several years we spoke of the responses of the people who came forward in our crusades as “decisions,” but we have even stopped doing that, for only God knows how many have made a definite commitment to Christ. Now we simply call them “inquirers”—people whose interest is sufficiently strong to cause them to make further inquiry about the Christian life. But of course each of these persons is dealt with as an earnest seeker of salvation, as indeed most of them turn out to be. . . .
In the third place, my faith in earlier theological concepts has deepened. For example, the years have brought a deepening conviction that the Word of God is quick and powerful and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The church has been effective only when it has spoken with authority. Truth begets its own authenticity; if we allow the truth to become adulterated and weakened by rationalisms it loses its power. At one time I grappled with the problem of the authority of the Scriptures. But the problem resolved itself when I finally said, “Lord, I take the Scriptures as thy revealed Word—by faith!” That ended my doubts. From that day to this the Scriptures have been like a rapier in my hand and I am sure than I would be shorn of any effectiveness I may have if this authority were taken from me. Someone will cry “Bibliolotry,” but a soldier need not worship his sword to wield it effectively. I have learned with Jeremiah: “Is not my word like as afire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29). I am convinced that the reason some ministers are cracking up is that they have no authority. I am thankful that there is a return to biblical preaching in America. The Scriptures are beginning to return to their rightful place as the authority in the church. . . .
A fourth change is to be seen in the fact that during the past ten years my concept of the church has taken on greater dimension. Ten years ago my concept of the church tended to be narrow and provincial, but after a decade of intimate contact with Christians the world over I am now aware that the family of God contains people of various ethnological, cultural, class and denominational differences. I have learned that there can even be minor disagreements of theology, methods and motives but that within the true church there is a mysterious unity that overrides all divisive factors.
In groups which in my ignorant piousness I formerly “frowned upon” I have found men so dedicated to Christ and so in love with the truth that I have felt unworthy to be in their presence. I have learned that although Christians do not always agree, they can disagree agreeably, and that what is most needed in the church today is for us to show an unbelieving world that we love one another. To me the church has become a great, glorious and triumphant organism. It is the body of Christ, and the humblest member is an important part of that body. I have also come to believe that within every visible church there is a group of regenerated, dedicated disciples of Christ.
A fifth change: my belief in the social implications of the gospel has deepened and broadened. I am convinced that faith without works is dead. I have never felt that the accusations against me of having no social concern were valid. Often the message of the evangelist is so personal that his statements on social matters are forgotten or left out when reports are made. It is my conviction that even though evangelism is necessarily confined within narrow limits the evangelist must not hedge on social issues. The cost of discipleship must be made plain from the platform. I have made the strongest possible statements on every social issue of our day. In addition, in our crusades we have tried to set an example. (Naturally, there are some statements that I made a few years ago on sociopolitical affairs that I would like to retract.)
Yet I am more convinced than ever before that we must change men before we can change society. The international problems are only reflections of individual problems. Sin is sin, be it personal or social, and the word repent is inseparably bound up with evangelism. Social sins, after all, are merely a large-scale projection of individual sins and need to be repented of by the offending segment of society. But the task of the evangelist is not merely to reform but to stimulate conversion, for conversion puts man in a position where God can do for him, and through him, what man is incapable of doing for or by himself.
Sixth, I have an increasing confidence in the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God. I am convinced that history is not wandering aimlessly, but that there is a plan and purpose in what often seems to us hopeless confusion. God has intervened more than once in history, and there is every reason to believe that he will intervene again. Man may build his towers of Babel, as he always has, and the world may marvel at his genius and his ability to make progress even apart from God, but history shows that ultimately man comes down from his tower in confusion and chaos, disillusioned and frustrated. The Scriptures declare that there is only One whose kingdom shall never end. I believe that when our Lord prayed, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” he prayed a prayer which is going to be answered. This will come about not by man’s efforts within history itself but by a direct, climactic intervention of the sovereign God.
Seventh, this past decade has been a period of ripening tares and ripening wheat. During this interval we have seen a strange paradox that often confused and bewildered me. We have seen a revival of religious interest throughout the United States but an acceleration of crime, divorce and immorality. Within the church there is a new depth of commitment, a new sense of destiny and a spirit of revival, yet in the world there is an intensification of the forces of evil. Crime is on the increase. Fear haunts the council halls of the nations. Wars, hot and cold, are being spawned across the world. Family life is threatened by evil forces. And in many places there is a stark lack of social concern. The tares of evil flourish even in the same field with the growing grain of righteousness. But we forget that Christ said: “In the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye first the tares and bind them in bundles and burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matt. 13:30). The wheat and the tares are destined to grow side by side; when wheat is sown, the Devil sows tares. But a day of separation, an ultimate triumph for truth and righteousness, is coming.
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