God, Guilt and Goldwater

The doctrine that the senator espouses could be implemented only by an extremism which would fertilize totalitarianism in this land.
WILLIAM STRINGFELLOW It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turns back to his own vomit (II Peter 2:22a).

+ T H E CONVENTION in which the forces under the banner of Barry Goldwater took possession of the national machinery of the Republican party and bestowed a presidential nomination on the Arizona senator seems to have been fundamentally a religious event. It was characterized, the commentators report, by "emotional zeal," "evangelical fervor" and "a religious fanaticism." Despite the arbitrary tactics, intimidating rule and moral confusion evident there, a spirit of religious revival pervaded the Cow Palace. Well there might have been, because a real religion was revived there. It is a religion of venerable origins, indigenous to America's past. Though reason may conclude that it is a religion irrelevant to the realities of this country in this century, though prudence may counsel that for both individuals and society it is suicidal in its tendencies, common sense argues that this religion cannot be dismissed now that it has become vested in one of the two major political parties in the land. No Time for Apathy I for one think that this is a peculiarly tormented religion, but what makes it most pathetic is not its articles of faith as such but the threat that the nation may be engulfed, subdued and captured by it. Let none of us who are apprehensive over the power and appeal of this religion surrender to confidence that there are enough dispassionate, informed and sensible citizens in this country to prevent it from prevailing: such confidence merely nourishes defeat. Ironically, in the personal religious heritage of the man who is installed as apostle and apologist for this faith there i$ little which is consonant with his present role. Goldwater is an Anglican with Jewish ancestors. He has revealed nothing of the sophisticated insight into history so characteristic of the Jews; he does not appear to remember with either lucidity or compassion the persecutions, ancient or recent, of the Jews. Nor has he displayed anything
Mr. Stringfellow is a New York attorney and an active Episcopal layman.
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of the Anglican genius for accommodation for the sake of unity, much less any comprehension of the transcendence of the secular which is an enduring virtue of Anglican sacramentalism. This is not to attack Goldwater's sincerity. Let that be taken for granted. The fact of sincerity is only incidental beside a man's beliefs and the beliefs of tho r . who have now clothed the Arizona senator in the dignity of a candidate for the presidency of the United States. The Religion of Goldwater The Goldwater credo, enunciated in its most painstakingly prepared form to date, is expressed in the senator's address accepting the nomination. And since the senator is constantly complaining that what he says is misunderstood but boasts that his acceptance speech was a model of plain English, it is to that and not to any random, extemporaneous or spontaneous utterings that one presumably may look to ascertain the dogmatics of the faith which Goldwater espouses and serves. The introit of that authoritative declaration of faith: "From this moment, united and determined, we will go forward together dedicated to the ultimate and undeniable greatness of the whole man." This is not empty rhetoric, for the nominee sets forth quite specifically a doctrine of man one, by the way, which it behooves heretics as well as true believers to understand, since those who are not dedicated to it are guilty not of "mere political differences or mere political mistakes" but of "a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny." What, then, is the anthropological understanding of the Goldwaterites? Who is this "whole man"? And of what does his "greatness" consist? According to the candidate, the true man is the acquisitive man: a man is whole if he procures, possesses and profits from property. The greatness of man is dependent upon "the sanctity of property." Such is the elementary doctrine of this religion that provides the moral criteria by which both men and societies are judged: "We see in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man rather than his determined enemy." Generically, this doctrine is one of self-justifica1079

tion. A man who wills to do so if he is not hindered by government can perfect his own salvation by obtaining, holding and using private property. Thus salvation is not universal, nor is it in any sense by God's election; it is competitive and comes to the man whose worth and worthiness are proved by the property he controls, earns or owns. To have property is evidence of moral excellence, defines individual dignity and is the divine reward for self-reliance. In such a view, as the senator himself has so very often repeated, the failure of a man to acquire property not only aborts his personal fulfillment but must be counted as sin or as the consequence of the interference of evil. If a man has no property he must be wasteful, selfindulgent, slothful or bereft of initiative, or else he is a victim or a dependent of sinister, ruthless, insatiable, dehumanizing governmental power. Pax Americana Much worse than such sinners or slaves who, having little or no property of their own, have neither virtue nor humanity, are those who, having property, are not true believers, do not uphold and propagate this religion. It is not, as the senator himself has argued, just a matter of differing opinions which might be moderated or tolerated it is a struggle against sin itself. Sin is to be shunned and sinners are to be cast out. The only reconciliation for the sinner is in his own repentance. Thus Governor Scranton, a man of property, had to be rebuffed when he conceded defeat at the convention and recited the traditional overtures for party unity. Though beaten, he vowed to fight again; meanwhile he would support the ticket. That is arrogance, not repentance. Nor is it, as the candidate himself declares, a matter of mistaken views which must be exposed and opposed; this crusade is against the very power of evil. With that there can be no compromise without contamination: the only remedy is exorcism. Applied specifically to issues of American society, the doctrine of the acquisitive man as the whole man regards foreign economic aid as squander; welfare assistance as reward for weakness; Social Security as surrender of self-reliance; public works as restraints of commerce; medicare as an invasion of privacy; product quality, packaging and advertising standards as subversive of a competitive market; the war on poverty as the purchase of votes; fluoridation as a restraint of choice; and taxation as a necessary but temporary evil. Goldwater complains that the Democratic administration "has talked and talked and talked and talked the words of freedom but has failed and failed and failed in the works of freedom." He says that for him "freedom" is not just a ritual word, but in truth it is that, for in such positions as these what he means by "freedom" becomes ruefully clear.
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T o propagate freedom, so defined, constitutes according to Goldwater a divinely commissioned national purpose for America in the world. "The Good Lord raised this mighty Republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free." While God is said to be "the author of freedom," Americans are freedom's "models" and "missionaries" on earth because they "have earned it." With no less formidable a patron than God, nuclear war can be risked on behalf of this concept of freedom. In the name of God, the American mission is to subdue those in the world who do not conform to this idea of freedom. Let the world be colonized for the sake of this notion of freedom. And let not America's manifest destiny in the cause of this kind of freedom be any longer compromised or impeded by membership in the United Nations. If the world longs for peace, let peace mean Pax Americana. There is nothing novel in what the nominee preaches in doctrine or in his application of doctrine to concrete issues. There has been in this country a recurrent and fiercely contested conflict between the sanctity of property and the dignity of human life, and concerning which of these forces furnishes a more enduring and beneficial basis for life in society. The question of whether qualification for suffrage and public office should be contingent upon property ownership, the whole tortured history of American chattel slavery, the Indian wars and the ensuing disposition of "the Indian problem," the conquest and exploitation of the frontier, the shocks of mechanization and industrialization, the decline of free enterprise with the emergence of monopoly capitalism, the cycles of expansion and depression, the retreat into isolationism in these and many other episodes a profound discord has burdened the nation's heritage. The Revenge of the WASPS The same discord still exists, and the vehemence with which those who believe that property has precedence over persons assert themselves via the Goldwater candidacy makes it ominously doubtful that conciliation, much less consensus, can be had in the conflict. For them the dispute is not over what is realistic but over what is ultimately right; it is concerned not with justice but with their own justification; it is not about political philosophy but about religious truth. For them, in such a cause there must be no "mistaken humility," the ends authorize any means, and there is no vice in extremism. The senator's remarks in this vein provoke alarm in many citizens who assume that he was speaking politically, whereas Goldwater remains astonished and angry about the fuss because he was really talking about his religious commitment. Idolatry of property is an old religion. It was practiced in medieval feudalism and in the era of
T H E CHRISTIAN CENTURY

colonial empires. It has its American roots in certain forms of Protestantism that developed and flourished among owners of land, holders of slaves, frontier settlers, rural folk and pioneer capitalists. If such religion seems simplistic, remember that the world of the private citizen seemed smaller then. If this faith in the sanctity of private property seems antiquated, remember that it was suited to some of the realities of the late 18th and the 19th centuries in this nation. If, in retrospect, Protestantism is to be criticized for its accommodations to the culture of those times, we must remember that among those who profess to be Christians conformity to the world is still commonplace and is always their most subtle temptation. If times have moved and Americans live now in the 20th century whether they find it congenial or not that does not in itself sabotage a religion so convenient to men who see their own initiative as moral justification, and so reassuring to those white Anglo-Saxons who suppose that God gave them this land as a reward for their enterprise. Idolaters and Dissenters The times have changed: the frontier is no longer a wilderness in the west but in the northern urban ghettos; property is no longer so important, but credit is; the machines human ingenuity has made compete with men for jobs; the affluence of a majority of the population is secured by the poverty of the remainder; the Negro citizen would as soon die as suffer further assaults upon, his humanity; the push of a button can turn on a light or exterminate mankind; the Republican candidate for President of the United States extols self-reliance in a world in which toilet paper is a luxury most people cannot afford. The times have changed indeed, but in America Protestantism has preserved the shrine of property, and the doctrine of the acquisitive man as the whole man is still defiantly preached with but few allowances for change save those required to maintain property as an idol. How easily did the courage of the pioneer become equated with the guile of the so-called self-made man! How quickly paper replaced land as the symbol of property! How shrewdly has the piety of the settler been attributed to the salesman! Whatever the verdict on this faith in its earlier expressions in the previous centuries, it is by mutations such as these that it has managed its survival in this century. And while this has been the religion harbored by a good many sectarian Protestants, it cannot be dismissed just because it is espoused by extremists, malcontents and some victims of paranoia. Too many pulpits in mainline Protestant churches have echoed the same idolatry of property and the same teaching of justification by acquisition. How often has Norman Vincent Peale assured his listeners that
SEPTEMBER 2, 1964

religion is a business asset because God rewards the man who is determined to get what he wants? How often have others preached the same because that is what their people wished to hear? Why have so many Protestant churches forsaken the dispossessed in the cities? Why is so much of the wealth of the churches invested in the mere maintenance of churchly institutions? Why has the acquiring and managing of property become the symbol of the "successful" congregation of "respectable" folk? How many Protestants attend to the gospel of visiting prisons, heading the sick, loving outcasts, and giving all that one possesses to the poor in order to follow Christ? Protestantism has not been without voices crying out against perversion of the gospel in the idolization of property. The social gospel era, the Christian pacifist movement, the inner city ministries, the ecumenical dialogue, the involvement of Christians in direct action in the racial crisis are examples of such forces and, regardless of whatever valid criticisms can be made of any of these within Protestantism, they are evidence of that compassion for the world and affirmation of the value of human life characteristic of biblical faith. And though there are a significant number of theologians, clergy and laity whose words and actions bespeak the biblical faith, the conclusion now seems inescapable that such a faith has not threatened the conscience of the vast multitude of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in America, either laity or clergy. If anything, such voices may have merely aroused a more impetuous allegiance among the idolaters. Bent on Triumph Thus the way was prepared for a great congregation of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants to gather at the convention in San Francisco to ask, "Where is the America we knew and loved?" and to hear v the promise from the one they had chosen: "We must, and we shall, return to proven ways not because they are old, but because they are true." Ironically, the one chosen would not have been welcome in the America for which they have such nostalgia. He is, after all, of Polish immigrant stock; his own wealth came by inheritance and marriage; on his paternal side there is Jewish blood; in short, he is no WASP. Yet sometimes prophets come disguised, and anyway this one says what these people have yearned to hear not just in sanctuaries or in secret meetings but from the very centerstage of the nation. Let no one despise these people as "kooks" or "nuts" or "Neanderthals," though evidently the support of such is welcomed by the candidate and approved by those who nominated him. Most of them cannot be so described and dismissed, for most of them are solid, honorable, well intentioned and sincerely self-righteous men and women. If they
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seem pathetically uninformed and fearfully frustrated, if their views are archaic and even nonsensical, if they are tempted into ruthless expediency, it is not because they are sinister or sick or mentally unstable but because the ultimate vindication of their religious belief is at stake. If they do not prevail in this test, so long besought of God, then it would mean either that God has abandoned them to his own enemies in which event there must be no God at all or that he has been displeased all along with their supplications and burnt offerings in which case their religion is false and their faith in vain. If they do not triumph in this trial, they will no longer have the solace of being right though rejected a solace which has nourished them and their candidate through the long years of waiting for this day. If they do not win this election, it will mean that the very things to which they are dedicated are significantly responsible for the things which they fear and loathe. In other words the chief motivation of the Goldwaterites is not malice, though some among them are malevolent, but a profound guilt arising from a fear that their worship of acquisitiveness is somehow the proximate cause of poverty, a provocation of crime on the streets, an incitement of racial violence, a reason for other nations' resentment of American power. What is at issue for the Goldwaterites in this campaign is that most traumatic question: whether the doctrine of the Fall applies to them as well as to everybody else in the world. If an appreciable number of citizens see this as the issue of this campaign and I submit they do then, of course, any extremity can be justified, and abstinence from extremism is morally reprehensible, precisely as the nominee proclaimed. An American Totalitarianism? Already there are ominous signs of links between the senator and his adherents and an array of extremists, both political and religious, in this country as well as elsewhere. Major General Edwin Walker appeared ecstatic that his fellow Episcopalian was nominated. Both ideological and financial backing for Governor Wallace of Alabama was dramatically switched to support for Senator Goldwater. A man who managed the Robert Welch candidacy for public office in Massachusetts has become chief of Goldwater operations in New England. Gestures of sympathy have been extended to fascist remnants in Germany. The candidate admits his awe of military authority. Radical and long-discredited malcontents among the Protestant sects are encouraged. Some who work openly for Goldwater by day mask in Klan costumes at night. Even Negroes considered "Uncle Toms" by their people are excluded from political recognition. Opponents suffer vilification and threats of bodily harm. The nominee shuns direct interrogation by the public
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media. The most recent Republican President is treated with mock deference approaching ridicule. Inquisitions begin to purge the Republican party. All of this has been publicly reported and is common knowledge: what more may have happened one fears to conjecture. Meanwhile both the ideas and the tactics which the candidate advocates are notoriously congenial to the totalitarian mentality. That military discretion is more effective than civilian direction is one example. That maintaining law and order requires quashing organized social protest is another. The way to peace traverses the brink of war. Scapegoats explain whatever is amiss and popularize whatever is to be changed. Simple answers to perplexing questions are what the people want and all that they deserve. If the senator's views are not applauded it is because they have been distorted. The "moderates" want harmony so much that they will surrender their moderation. Falsehoods unstintingly repeated will be believed. The way to win is to induce opponents to defeat each other. American history reveals no more cynical instance of such ethics than is seen in the Goldwater camp's exploitation of the racial crisis. While boasting of a pure heart, the senator invokes the Constitution against itself in opposing the civil rights act, and simultaneously calculates that appealing for cloture on political debate on civil rights will endear his candidacy to all those white citizens who wish that the Negro revolution had never happened and would now just somehow go away, knowing all the while, as he must know unless he be knave or fool or faker that such an appeal is certain to incite among Negro citizens a despair that has no outlet but violence. Will such traffic in racism make Goldwater President of the United States? Will such wickedness or recklessness be the advent of an American totalitarianism? How much do these days in the 1960s in America resemble the 1930s in Germany? The fraternization between Goldwater and totalitarians, both foreign and American, may have serious implications. The ideas the man utters summon memories of both demagogues and dictators. The tactics employed abuse the democratic process by suppressing dissent. The Cow Palace at times rang with echoes from the Munich beer hall. Analogies mislead at least as much as they instruct. And while ominous comparisons are invited by the events that took place at San Francisco, important distinctions are apparent as well. Goldwater would feign to rule the nation, but he has exhibited no dark genius such as possessed Hitler. Indeed he himself would surely admit that he has exhibited no genius of any sort. There is also ample evidence, in his own admissions before and since his nomination, that he does not particularly Want to be President and would personally
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be more content to remain in the privileged sanctuary of the Senate where he could carp at and criticize whoever is President. But if Goldwater be no Hitler, that still does not make the nation safe from totalitarianism. He attracts totalitarian, and his candidacy has already given them a home in a major political party. And

the doctrine he recites could be implemented only by an extremism which would fertilize totalitarianism in this land. The danger is that Goldwater may be the precursor of an American totalitarianism. The governor of Mississippi warned the other day that 1964 may see America's last free election. For once he is right.

Technology's Impact on Religion

Directly and indirectly the churches have been marked by the technical revolutions of the past two decades.
CLAIR M. COOK

+ RECENT and rapid technological change has shaken our society to its roots. In 1940 the total sum spent in the United States on research and development "R & D," in the argot of such journals as Business Week was $500 million; in i960 it was estimated at $13 billion, 26 times as much. In the past decade, it is claimed, the United States has spent as much money on new processes, new products and new technologies as in all our previous history combined. The speed of change is indicated by the remarkable development of the new "light fantastic," the laser, whose name is drawn from the initial letters of its description, "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." The ruby laser, which applies the quantum theory to the harnessing of random light waves by making them form a coherent marching order of concentrated waves, was first demonstrated only in i960. Yet its development has already progressed to the stage where coherent light is produced by direct conversion from electricity passed through a semiconductor crystal. Light beams have drilled holes in diamonds, spot-welded detached retinas and been bounced off the moon. In their new form they promise a communications revolution. By 1961 laser development was already a $20 million business; in 1962 it moved to $50 million and in 1963 reached $100 million. I No longer do we have the simple age described in Great Industries of the United States, a. fascinating volume published in 1872. One chapter tells of a machine invented in 1859 for the automatic production of horseshoe nails, a northern invention which aided Civil War cavalry operations immenseMr. Cook is legislative assistant to Senator Vance Hartke (D., Ind.).
S E P T E M B E R 2, 1964

ly. The account describes the marvel of this machine:

In making a horseshoe nail by hand, the blacksmith gives some twenty blows with the hammer in order to form the same into shape, and can make but from ten to twelve pounds as a day's work; but with the Putnam machine the nail receives some sixty blows from the hammer, leaving the iron much more compacted in the fibre, and more nearly perfect than is possible to be done by hand, while one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds are made daily by a machine.

We could cope with a machine that moved the making of horseshoe nails from smithcraft to factory. But today, according to a congressional subcommittee estimate, changing technology results in the job displacement of 1.25 million persons annually, while we need in addition 1.3 million new jobs each year just for those newly entering the labor force. Rapid development is accompanied by increased complexity. Thirty years ago we were being taught that the smallest possible division of matter, the atom, contained a positive nucleus and negative electrons, though their existence had not been proved. Now we have broken down the atom itself and identified within it all sorts of neutrons, mesons, protons and gamma particles, besides a "nuclear zoo" to the number of at least 26 different bits. A dozen years ago the word "automation" was not even in our vocabulary. Now we have not only lasers but masers, semiconductors, transistors, silicone wafers, IBM 7090 computers the list could be extended on and on. And the baffling complexities of research put their mark on everyday living. No longer can a teen-ager disassemble a Model T and put it together again with fairly simple tools; now he must consult a manual even to do a grease job. The new age is making itself felt even in religion. 1083

^ s
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