Desegregation and Regeneration

The problem of justice to the American Negro continues to be an acute one.

In secular circles the issues in debate pulsate between the poles of segregation and integration. Beyond doubt American conscience has been pricked repeatedly over the wrongness of race discrimination, disclosed most keenly in the bias that deprives the Negro of equal rights and thus implies his essential inferiority.

The reasons for pressures for swift solution are plain enough. Left to itself, the situation seemed to promise little in the way of improvement; the maintenance of “distance” between whites and blacks had gained sociocultural significance in the South. Whereas one might have expected Christian churches to lead the way to an era of improved relations, not a few were invoking the Bible, in circumvention of its emphasis on the equal dignity of men and on transcending racial distinctions in the body of Christ, to justify the status quo.

The months that have passed since the U. S. Supreme Court decision of 1954 have served only to emphasize the futility of forced solutions in the absence of high moral and spiritual conviction. Governor Faubus of Arkansas has questioned the high court’s “authority.” Others (too often implying that the mere passage of time will improve conditions) suggest that race relations are now worse than they were. More violence was predicted in Little Rock. Desertion of public schools for private schools has been promoted in some states to circumvent desegregation.

Perhaps the main occasion of rising tensions has been the drive for “integration,” a fuzzy term that covers a multitude of ambiguities and ambitions. Many a proponent of desegregation turns a puzzled glance at integration. Does forced integration preclude voluntary segregation? What of interracial marriage? Do Negroes have the right to attend “white churches” to force a propaganda situation unfavorable to such churches merely because they have failed to endorse an integrationist program that appears to them too secular and political in spirit to hold promise of permanent and effective solution?

To evangelical churches the tensions that plague the human race require, for their solution, a reference to the indispensability of regeneration. They view the problem of racial antipathy as basically an acute aspect of the larger sin of lovelessness for one’s neighbor. The Church is obliged by the Great Commission to speak to unredeemed men only through the evangelistic and missionary summons. Philosophers of religion may argue that social problems are not wholly responsive to personal redemption, but the believing Church knows that to turn elsewhere for a primary solution is to forsake the standpoint of apostolic Christianity, and to expect too much from legal compulsion and from unregenerate human nature.

One can well understand, therefore, a lack of enthusiasm for integration without regeneration. In the long run, the bent of human nature is such that, apart from spiritual renewal, human history turns out to be a variegated pattern of revolt against the living God.

Nonetheless, the Church is obliged to proclaim a divinely revealed ethic of universal validity. She is not precluded from, nor can she be justified for failure to seek social justice for the Negro. The Church has no license to make conversion a precondition of her support of right and decency in the world at large. If the Church had taken a vigorous and courageous initiative in deploring the evils of segregation, even with a special eye on the Negro in her own fellowship, her hesitancy in approving some specific “program of integration” as the Christian solution would not give rise to misunderstanding.

As it is, secular agencies tend to equate a lack of ecclesiastical endorsement of their particular programs as approval of segregation—which is hardly fair to the conscience and intention of the churches. Moreover, ecclesiastical leaders professing to speak for organized religion add to the confusion when they publicize pressures on political leaders to display spiritual leadership by supporting integration. (Two major officials of United Presbyterian Church—Dr. Eugene Carson Blake and Dr. Theophilus M. Taylor—threw their weight for enforcing the Supreme Court desegregation decision “with troops and tanks if necessary,” and the huge National Baptist Convention voiced the same sentiment.) Everyone will sympathize with the rebuke of any who seek to be frustrate the law of the land when justice is at stake, but the weapons of Christian warfare are spiritual. It is curious that some ecumenical leaders condemned an American show of force in Lebanon while these leaders urged it at home.

Yet the churches themselves are to blame for much of the misunderstanding they have inherited, for it is a dividend yielded by their past silence. The evangelical churches glory in their heritage, the knowledge of the will of God communicated in changeless principles of morality. Now as never before, in the tensions and antagonisms of the race problem in America, they are given an opportunity to proclaim and to live those verities. If the churches have thus far failed to exert moral and spiritual leadership in facing this problem, the opportunity has not yet passed to exhibit to a democracy in trouble the dynamic virtue of brotherhood in Christ.

In a recent conference of Christian leaders in the South on the race problem, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S executive editor, Dr. L. Nelson Bell, prepared a statement on “The Race Issue and a Christian Principle” that commended itself spontaneously to the conferees. It follows:

1. Christians should recognize that there is no biblical basis or legal justification for segregation. Segregation, as enjoined in the Old Testament, had to do with religious separation while the New Testament lends no comfort to the idea of racial segregation within the Christian Church. For these reasons it can be safely affirmed that segregation of races enforced by law is both un-Christian and un-American.

2. It can be demonstrated with equal cogency that forced integration of the races is sociologically impracticable and at the same time such forced alignments violate the right of personal choice.

3. The Christian concept of race may be expressed in the following way: a. God makes no distinction among men; all are alike the objects of his love, mercy and proffered redemptive work. b. For this reason, all Christians are brothers in Christ, regardless of race or color. c. The inescapable corollary to these truths is that Church membership should be open to all without discrimination or restriction.

4. In the light of these basically Christian affirmations the Church should implement them as follows: a. All churches should be open to attendance and membership without reference to race or color. b. Recognize that in so doing, in most areas and under normal conditions this will not result in an integrated church, since various races will prefer separate churches for social, economic, educational and many other reasons. c. But, this opening of the doors of the churches will break down the man-made and sinful barrier which stems from prejudice and recognize the unquestioned Christian principle of man’s uniform need of God’s redemptive work in Christ, a need and a salvation which knows no distinction of race or color.

5. To aid in an honest and just solution of this problem on every level, the Church should frankly recognize that racial differences, implying neither inferiority nor superiority in God’s sight, are nevertheless actual differences. They usually express themselves in social preferences and alignments which are a matter of personal choice, not related to either pride or prejudice. Because of this fact, and because there is no Christian principle involved, the Church should neither foster nor force, in the name of Christianity, a social integration which may be neither desired or desirable.

6. The Church should concentrate greater energy on condemning those sinful attitudes of mind and heart where hate, prejudice and indifference continue to foster injustice and discrimination and in so doing show that these attitudes are sin.

7. The problem of the public schools constitutes a dilemma in many areas in the South which both the Church and the courts of the land should recognize and admit. Because these schools are tax-supported, they are in name and in fact “public” schools. At the same time, because ratio of the races varies in different localities the problem also varies from the simple in some areas to the apparently insoluble at the present time in others. Those who live where only ten or fifteen percent of the population is of a minority race have no serious problem. Where that ratio is reversed the issue is one of the greatest magnitude and those who have to deal with it deserve the sympathetic concern and understanding of others. It must be recognized by both Church and State that at this time, and under present conditions, the problem involves social, moral, hygenic, educational and other factors which admit no immediate or easy solution. The Supreme Court’s phrase, “with all due haste,” must be interpreted on the one hand as requiring an honest effort to solve the problem, and on the other with reference to the leniency and consideration which existing conditions demand.

8. Finally, the Church has a grave responsibility in this issue; a responsibility to proclaim love, tolerance and justice to all as the basic Christian virtues to be accepted in theory and practiced in fact. Basic to this concept is the urgent necessity of removing all barriers to spiritual fellowship in Christ, without at the same time attempting to force un-natural social relationships. The Church has the responsibility of recognizing that more than spiritual issues are involved and that while freely admitting full spiritual and legal rights to all, there are, at the same time, social implications and considerations which involve the matter of personal choice, over which the Church has no jurisdiction and into which it should not intrude in the name of Christianity.

To the credit of the 82nd Congress the lawmakers in 1952 called upon the President to set aside annually one day on which the people “may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.” Whatever else can be done in the spiritual interest of the United States, it is similarly to President Eisenhower’s credit that in the spirit of the resolution he named October 1 as a “National Day of Prayer.”

The President’s proclamation recognized “continuing need of the wisdom and strength that come from God.” His call was to prayer not for our nation alone but “for all mankind.” The President, moreover, would have us ask for “divine guidance in our efforts to lead our children in the paths of truth” and “that we may be saved from blinding pride and from any act hurtful to … free nations joined in building … peace.”

Ministers and laymen alike have a high and holy obligation to pray, now and in days to come, over the awesome portents in national and international affairs. To neglect an implementation of the presidential proclamation and of the biblical imperative behind it, is to ignore a Christian duty. Of all the weapons for improving national and international relations, prayer is the most neglected.

Most people are amazed to learn that there are more than 200 family and professional magazines in America with a circulation of over 95 million which still refuse to carry liquor advertising. Among the leading magazines in this group has been The Saturday Evening Post.

Now comes the announcement by Robert E. MacNeal, president of the Curtis Publishing Company, that the Post has changed its policy and will from now on advertise beer, ale, wine, gin, rum, whiskey and vodka.

It is with deep regret that we record the fact that this popular weekly has forsaken its high ideals and has succumbed to the subtle pressures of the liquor industry.

Henceforce, as Dr. Carradine R. Hooton, of the Board of Temperance of the Methodist Church, so ably puts it, “The Post will be doing its share of recruiting new drinkers” and becoming a party with the liquor industry, not only in disseminating “advertising which is basically false and misleading” but in marketing products which are damaging to health and happiness, and to human personality and character.

Many of us who have been inspired by the longstanding courageous policy of the Post are quite embarassed to further commend it. With this breach of its standards, what may we expect to ensue in the years ahead?

Throughout much of the summer Washington’s National Theater was given over to two Moral Rearmament plays, The Crowning Experience and He Was Not There, each with a mood for spiritual values. Both presentations stress the need of a dynamic ideology to lift the West above vulnerability to naturalistic assaults on modern life. With an eye on communist propaganda, the one play moves directly to the problem of race prejudice and the other to the spiritual vacuum in American homes.

Taken simply at this level, one may be thankful that the theater often shallow and shaggy enough these days, is here devoted to profounder ends. Never was the thrust for spiritual and moral concerns more necessary than now at every level of modern culture.

But whoever expects an essentially Christian message will find it as obscure in Moral Rearmament as in Dr. Frank Buchman’s earlier Oxford Group. The need for changed lives, for moral absolutes and divine guidance, still survives, as does a certain shading of Christian piety, but the centrality of Christ’s atoning work and the unique authority of Scripture are not to be found. So syncretistic is the message, in fact, that neither Moslem nor Buddhist need change his religion to join the ranks. Moral Rearmament is spectacular and flashy; it parades in public a corps of prominent adherents from around the world. But it still lacks spiritual discernment and depth, as those who are schooled in a biblical outlook on life will readily detect.

The day before the 85th Congress adjourned Senator Barry Goldwater (R.-Ariz.) said to his colleagues in the Senate: “We have appropriated and authorized the expenditure of enough money to give this country in the approaching years its greatest peacetime deficit—a deficit estimated as high as $12 billion.… I want to remind my colleagues again, as I often have, that our enemies in Russia have for many years said they would destroy us by causing a collapse of our economy, and it seems to me, as we wind up the 85th Congress, that they are making better progress towards this means of ending our freedoms than they are making in the material field of weapons.”

Four days later, speaking before the biennial convention of the AFL-CIO in San Diego, Senator Johnston (D.-S. C.) announced a seven-point program of his Senate Civil Service Committee to bring added “benefits” for Federal employees, a program which will involve hundreds of millions of dollars.

With practically every department of government clamoring for the spending of additional millions, even billions—funds which are nowhere in sight—one wonders from whence have come the evil spirits which so violently hasten us down the slope towards the sea of national insolvency and destruction.

Unless a concerted cry is raised against this present folly, our doom is as certain as was that of the possessed swine of Gadara.

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