The Watergate scandal grew worse in 1974—and then worse still. CT looked at President Richard Nixon’s ethical lapses, revealed in the publication of transcripts of secret tapes he had in the White House, and asked, “Should Nixon resign?”
There can be no doubt that a large percentage of those who voted for Richard Nixon in November, 1972, no longer have confidence in him, and that his capacity to execute the functions of his office has been considerably reduced. Whether guilty or innocent of impeachable offenses—“treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”—he bears the ultimate responsibility for what Watergate has come to stand for.
Mr. Nixon’s problems were greatly intensified by his release of the transcripts of the tapes. Up to that time the major if not the only question was a legal one: Did he have advance knowledge of Watergate and was he involved in the cover-up? To that has been added a large question of morality. The transcripts show him to be a person who has failed gravely to live up to the moral demands of our Judeo-Christian heritage. We do not expect perfection, but we rightly expect our leaders, and especially our President, to practice a higher level of morality than the tapes reveal. …
We now have a President who is under House scrutiny for possible impeachment and whose moral flaws have been revealed. A legal question lies at the root of the call for impeachment; a moral question, at least superficially and theoretically, lies at the root of the call for resignation. If the President were to resign, the legal question would not be resolved. Yet the Constitution does not provide for the removal of a President because of moral flaws. To resign would be to leave the presidency for other than a constitutional offense. …
Superficially a case can be made for resignation based on the immediate best interests of the nation. But the long-run disadvantages might outweigh any immediate benefits.
When Nixon did resign—the first (and, to-date, only) president in American history to step down in disgrace—CT paused to reflect on the troubled era and express hope for the next president, Gerald Ford.
During the last decade and a half John F. Kennedy was assassinated; the armed forces fought in Viet Nam and finally came home; Lyndon B. Johnson was eliminated from the 1968 presidential campaign by the pressures of an unpopular war despite his election in 1964 by a great landslide; Robert Kennedy was assassinated at a time when his candidacy for the office of president was reaching a high tide; Richard Nixon won the election in 1968 with the promise to end the war in Viet Nam and bring peace to the world. The end of Nixon’s first term was marred by the Watergate charges. …
Early in his second term Nixon succeeded in bringing U.S. participation in the Viet Nam war to a conclusion. Not long thereafter came the exposure and finally the resignation from the vice-presidency of Spiro Agnew, whose “law and order” mentality was grossly at variance with his personal practices. Meanwhile the Watergate situation was moving slowly but inexorably to a climax, which finally came on the evening of August 8, when President Nixon announced to the nation that he would resign the following day. …
America’s new president, Gerald Ford, seems to have grasped the central demand of the nation from the ethical standpoint: the need for truth, honesty, and integrity in the White House and throughout the government. He has promised to make these principles the pole-stars of his administration. No government can long stand when these virtues have disappeared. We hope that Mr. Ford will clearly exemplify them, that in his conduct of the government there will be an openness and honesty and an obvious commitment to righteousness.
President Ford would be well advised to choose men and women of Christian faith and prayer to work with him—not just career bureaucrats, businessmen, and financiers.
In 1974, CT also reported on struggles around the world. Theologian René Padilla, a regular columnist, wrote about the military coup in Chile in a piece titled “The Church and Political Ambiguity.”
For many Latin Americans the former President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was a symbol of hope. Democratically elected in 1970, he was for them the embodiment of a cherished desire for revolution without bloodshed. …
But the experiment was doomed to failure. Whatever one may think of the ideological color of Allende’s revolution, the fact remains that no small nation in the Third World is truly free today to follow its own course and to keep its economy unaffected by international pressures at the same time. Add to this the internal pressures created not only by the political conservatives but also by the extreme leftists, and you will easily understand the great economic chaos that overtook Chile in the months preceding the military blow of September, 1973. …
I will not attempt here to explain the factors that precipitated the military blow led by General Augusto Pinochet and his colleagues (all of them professing Roman Catholics) last year. According to a common opinion, it would have never taken place aside from the encouragement of the U. S. State Department. Be that as it may, Allende’s Marxist experiment came to an end marked by his own suicide and followed by a systematic effort to reverse the revolution that he had initiated.
As soon as the military had taken over, several evangelical leaders expressed their adherence to the new government. That God had directly intervened to deliver the country from Communism was a widespread view among evangelical Christians. And I know of at least one missionary statesman whose interpretations of the military takeover as God’s doing was widely circulated abroad. Nothing was said, however, about the negative aspects of the whole situation and particularly about the appalling cruelty displayed by the military regime in dealing with its political opponents.
CT also tried to help readers understand the political tumult happening in Cyprus, where a military coup overthrew a president who was also an Eastern Orthodox archbishop:
To write about Cyprus is not easy, partly because of the complexity of the situation, partly because of the marked (but understandable) unhelpfulness I experienced in Nicosia from British and American information agencies, but also because of my dismay, felt in 1965 and recently renewed in Nicosia, that the dual role of Makarios should perpetuate old antagonisms. That one man should officially represent both church and state calls for a Solomonic wisdom and impartiality that the president/archbishop shows little signs of possessing.
“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” is a word that the apostles may well have proclaimed to the Cypriot proconsul Sergius Paulus. Makarios and his troubled island vividly demonstrate the folly of ignoring that divine injunction.
Evangelicals were thinking globally in 1974 thanks, in part, to the International Congress on World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland. CT treated the event as a monumental moment in evangelical history and covered the gathering from beginning to end. Billy Graham laid out the purpose in a 5,600-word article, “Why Lausanne?”
God is at work in a remarkable way. Never have so many people been so open to the Gospel. In parts of Asia, there are evidences of the outpouring of God’s Spirit in evangelism. In Korea, the churches are increasing four times faster than the population. In certain parts of northeast India, Christians now form a majority of the population and are bringing about a whole new dimension of civic righteousness. In Papua, New Guinea, a land where the Gospel was virtually unknown before this generation, a large percentage of the people now profess faith in Christ. Latin Americans are responding to the Gospel in unprecedented numbers, and evangelical churches in many parts of Latin America are multiplying vigorously.
In North America, especially the United States, there has been a remarkable upsurge of interest in the Gospel in the last decade—especially among youth. It is true that old denominations with theologically liberal tendencies are declining; yet the more evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention (America’s largest Protestant denomination) are showing a steady growth. Similarly the evangelical theological seminaries and Bible schools are overflowing while the more liberal schools are seeing a dramatic drop in enrollment. Scores of para-church evangelistic organizations are flourishing as never before.
Editor Harold Lindsell offered an optimistic appraisal after the meeting:
Lausanne dealt substantively with two questions: (1) What is it that evangelicals believe and are called upon to do? and (2) What strategies and methods can evangelicals, working together, use to complete the task God has called them to do?
Lausanne brought together many of the finest evangelical minds and the most devoted and committed servants of God. The excellence of the program, the wide range of small strategy and study groups, the mingling of men and women across racial, class, and denominational lines, and the free expression of differing opinions on some questions were hallmarks of the congress. …
At Lausanne the Gospel was tied to the mission of the Church, and that mission was defined as the evangelization of the world. … The spirit of sacrifice required to do this job was emphasized, and covenant signers were called upon to cultivate “a simple lifestyle in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism.” …
At Lausanne, social action was not put on the same plane with the proclamation of the Gospel, nor was it given standing as a substitute for the Gospel. But it surfaced again and again, and Christians were called to work for justice for all mankind.
Other spiritual developments of the era were more troubling. CT said the success of the film The Exorcist spurred widespread interest in demons, prompting many Americans to ask, “Exorcism: Is it for real?”
Experiential realization of Satan’s existence is not hard to come by either, in our century of world holocausts (nobody wants war, but war is everywhere), genocide, and a humanity bent on self-destruction. … If one accepts the biblical evidence for the ontological reality of the devil, one is simultaneously committed to the reality of demon possession, for the demons of the New Testament do not remain outside human life, with their hideous countenances pressed as it were against the windowpanes of the soul; they can break through the glass and take up residence within. …
Possession by demons is one of the most constant and universal religious phenomena, experientially confirmed among primitive peoples and civilized moderns alike, as the classical treatises on the subject fully attest ….
Whatever the forms employed in exorcism, everything must focus upon the power and strength of Christ. An exorcist, no matter how sound in doctrine and sanctified in life, is no personal match for supernatural evil. Just as some witnessing battles are lost while others are won, so some exorcisms succeed while others do not.
The maturity of The Exorcist as book and film was nowhere better demonstrated than in its recognition that in the last analysis, where all else fails, only Substitution rids man of the evil powers arrayed against him. Thus the final appeal must always be made to the Great Substitute, who on the cross, “having spoiled principalities and powers, made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Col. 2:14, 15).
There and there alone we have an Exorcist who (thank God!) does not need to be paid to prevent repossession. What he did for us can never be repaid. And one day even our failures will be redeemed, for from the heights of heaven to the lowest depths of hell every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
