The Rising Tide of Violence

While millions of prosperous Americans were cooling themselves at waterside resorts last month, violence exploded again in the heart of U. S. cities. Ghetto after ghetto swarmed with rioters, policemen, and armed soldiers. By month’s end, the long hot summer had turned more than a dozen cities into a purgatory of hatred, looting, arson, demagoguery, and death.

Those who still think that the term “the great society” is appropriate for our land should tremble before the warning signals of a declining culture. The state of New Jersey, which a few weeks earlier had hosted the Johnson-Kosygin summit meeting in quest of world understanding, found itself struggling in Newark for the basic elements of civil order. Fires had hardly died out in Newark when a week of unprecedented fury left blocks of downtown Detroit in rubble. At least twenty-seven people died in Newark, forty-one in Detroit. Thousands were injured. Property damage approached $300 million. In the same few days similar violence shook Plainfield and Englewood, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Cambridge, New York, Erie, Phoenix, Cincinnati, and a host of other cities. And still it did not seem that the end was in sight.

As Americans paused to reflect on the weeks of violence, two things appeared certain. First, the angry wave of violence was rising rather than subsiding, in spite of the massive efforts of government and private agencies to contain it. It also seemed that the rioting was only one wave in a rising tide of violence that increasingly threatens American society and the long-range survival of basic Western values.

In the past three years, serious disorders stemming from racial unrest have immobilized parts of more than fifty cities. But thirty of these outbreaks have occurred within the past twelve months. And at one point in the recent outbreaks, Chet Huntley announced on NBC television that violence had occurred in a dozen American cities simultaneously within the preceding twenty-four hours.

Actually, the violence was even more widespread. The evidence lies in the increase of crime across the widest possible spectrum of American life. United States Court of Appeals Judge Warren E. Burger reported recently that “people murder others in this country at the rate of more than one for every hour of the day. There are more than 140 crimes of theft every hour; assault and violence and rape grow comparably.” Moreover, the large amount of crime committed by persons under twenty suggests that the worst is yet to come, and the crimes are hardly restricted to the inner city. Violence has assumed such proportions on television, in plays and movies, and in novels that Esquire magazine asked recently, “Why are we suddenly obsessed with violence?” Has violence become the American way of life?

A partial explanation of the most recent riots undoubtedly lies in the intensified but frustrated hopes of many caught up in the Negro revolution. The way the riots in Cambridge, Maryland, exploded within hours of the provocative speech of black-power advocate H. Rap Brown is evidence of that. But racial unrest does not explain it all. Many Negroes who have been outspoken on behalf of Negro rights did not endorse the violence, yet they were not heard; and few doubted that Negroes suffered most in the destruction.

Poverty and the desperation born of it were also a significant factor, but as an exclusive explanation this too was inadequate. Plenty in the inner city invites exploitation by demagogues. But two days of rioting shook Waterloo, Iowa (population 75,000), where the 6,000 Negro residents are well integrated into the schools and where unemployment is only 2.3 per cent, 1.7 per cent below the national average. In Newark, Negroes suffer all the grimness of a large, downtrodden city; but $2 million in government funds was spent on community projects in the last twelve months, and unemployment has been halved since 1962. This year $30 million is being spent on poverty programs in Detroit. Still the riots occurred. The failure of such large sums to prevent rioting casts doubt on the theory that increased government spending alone can solve the problems in the cities—or anywhere else, for that matter.

The claim that the surge of riots was due in some measure to the successful work of agitators was also to the point, though this work was not in creating a conspiracy so much as in appealing to a basic human lawlessness that thrives today in the moral vacuum of American society. The agitators appeal to the anarchist in man. And if their actions are heinous, as they most certainly are, they are at least no more heinous than similar actions on the part of white racists and those who practice violence for even less justifiable ends. “This is not a Negro rebellion,” said New Jersey’s Governor Hughes. “This is a criminal insurrection.”

For those who agreed, the weeks of rioting called for punishment of criminals and swift restoration of civil order. Said Dr. Martin Luther King in a statement signed by three other prominent Negro leaders: “Killing, arson, looting are criminal acts and should be dealt with as such. Equally guilty are those who incite, provoke and call specifically for such action. There is no injustice which justifies the present destruction of the Negro community and its people.”

For many, the immediate problem was how to recognize genuine complaints and rectify the problems in the ghetto without appearing to reward violence. Unfortunately, it seemed at times that everyone but the rioters was being blamed for destruction while the innocent paid the price.

The long-range problem is the need to restore the basic values of society and to instill the inherent respect for law and order without which no society can function. Although violence itself is not necessarily an evil when controlled by law and exercised in the cause of righteousness, outcroppings of violence in individuals for individual ends must either be restrained or punished.

At the same time, individual Christians and the Christian churches might well be asking what they have done to correct the conditions that breed unrest. A number of the large denominations seem content to pass resolutions about the problems of the slums and to let the government carry on the battle from there. On the local level, many pulpits have been doling out a monotonous endorsement of social-gospel legislation for so long that the man in the pew has lost all sense of personal responsibility. A number of major service clubs are losing members despite the population increase. Few people of means regard their possessions as individual trusts for which they are accountable to God. Some slum lords are pillars in Protestant churches, and those that are not could often join easily if they wanted to.

Many churchgoers are increasingly alienated by an inner circle of churchmen who have put the Church’s trust in inadequate political processes, and not in the realities of spiritual renewal and personal voluntarism. But until the two-thirds of the American people who belong to churches assume a personal obligation in regard to national problems, the Christian community will not be guiltless for the rising tide of violence. Nor will it be showing itself a viable force within this country, much less the salt of the earth.

Jerusalem is now “up for grabs” in the councils of statesmen and churchmen. Both the permanent unity of the “Holy City” and its supervisory authority are controversial issues that threaten to erode Jewish-Christian understanding hard won during the past decade.

The interwoven political and religious strands of the controversy are of long standing. Regathering of the Jews in Palestine and emergence of the state of Israel in 1948 brought to white heat Hebrew-Arab tensions that reach back across Old Testament history; and it also stirred new interest in the prophecies of revealed religion as well as in political messianism.

The capture of Old Jerusalem by Israeli soldiers during the recent Middle East war has put the ancient city on the critical list of problems, not only in the United Nations, but also among the great theistic religions of the world. Increasingly the Jewish community has demanded Christian support on Jewish terms (a telegram sent to the White House, beginning “We Christians,” was reportedly written by Jews). Meanwhile, although many Lebanese are open to de facto recognition of the Israeli state, some Arabs in Egypt bitterly predict another “Armenian massacre” if Christians support the Israeli cause.

Jerusalem, over which Jesus wept, remains a vexing problem. Unless peace and justice emerge in the Middle East, the Arab states and Israel will simply bide their time for another clash. For spuming the 1947 United Nations proposal to internationalize Jerusalem, for refusing to recognize Israel and sealing off Jews from their wailing wall, and for its recent military defeat, Jordan doubtless will pay a heavy price. The Israeli government apparently considers reunification of Jerusalem (it shuns the word “annexation”) to be the only unnegotiable issue arising out of the June 5–10 war. Surely some way must be found to preserve the integrity of Jerusalem. But does sympathy for Israel’s political integrity require sympathy for Israel’s territorial integrity, particularly in the matter of the administration of Old Jerusalem (quite apart from all other Zionist aspirations)?

Dr. H. P. Van Dusen, past president of Union Theological Seminary, warns against Christian approval of the recent Israeli conquest, which he deplores as “the most violent, ruthless (and successful) aggression since Hitler’s blitzkrieg across Western Europe.” Van Dusen argues that “every square mile of Arab homeland appropriated by Israel, every additional Arab subjugated or driven into exile, will merely exacerbate the smoldering resolve for revenge.”

But Reinhold Niebuhr, who twenty years ago led Christian support for an Israeli homeland, with fifteen other theologians now approves Jerusalem’s administrative reunification apparently under Israeli supervision, on the assumption that “Judaism presupposes inextricable ties with the land of Israel and the city of David, without which Judaism cannot be truly herself.”

The Christian Century considers joint administration by Israeli and Jordanian forces the best solution.

The National Council of Churches, through its ad hoc committee on the Middle East, favores an undefined international presence to guarantee security, full access, and protection of shrines.

Pope Paul VI has reduced the ambiguity by proposing internationalization of the holy places. Since the Orthodox and Armenians hold property rights and control over 80 per cent of the traditional Christian holy places (in which Protestants are little interested), some leaders of the World Council of Churches regarded the Vatican’s bid for cooperation by Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras of Turkey as a power play that might minimize Protestant witness in the Holy Land. Coming at the moment of Israel’s need of help in the United Nations, the Vatican move toward tacit acceptance of Israeli control of Old Jerusalem was seen as an effort to strengthen Rome’s position. But though Athenagoras is “first among equals,” he lacks jurisdiction over Jerusalem’s Orthodox Patriarch Benedictos, and the Orthodox Church is a WCC affiliate.

The WCC, in its backstage game of musical chairs with the Vatican, has so far avoided open endorsement or criticism of the Pope’s proposal, though it has appealed for a $2 million relief fund for Middle East war sufferers. The vague NCC proposal of international presence may have pointed toward the U. N.; but that agency, which fled the Gulf of Aqaba and is now hampered by formal and informal vetoes, can hardly inspire real confidence over Zion. Two NCC divisions and the WCC are exploring the possibilities of an inter-faith center in Jerusalem for encounter, study, and action among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. WCC leaders held informal talks this month with Middle East representatives of Orthodox churches and with European church leaders (some almost pathologically pro-Israel in the aftermath of the Nazi crimes).

In this ecumenical casting of lots for Jerusalem, nothing is more apparent than an insensitivity to evangelical concerns.

While ecumenists deplore Israeli use of napalm in fierce fighting in Syria and Jordan, the Egyptian use of poison gas in Yemen, little is said of wanton Israeli damage to evangelical enterprises in Old Jerusalem—including the YMCA, slaughter of the keeper of the Garden Tomb, damage to the Bethlehem hospital. Such violence has raised evangelical anxieties about assurances of protection under Israeli administration. A full assessment should be made of the present status of evangelical efforts in the Old City.

NCC advisers and consultants are in dire confusion about the Gospel and the Jew. Some contend that to evangelize the Jew is anti-Semitic; others share Niebuhr’s notion that Israel is already a segment of Western Christianity. Evangelical Christians consider non-evangelization of the Jew a supreme act of lovelessness. Although the NCC executive committee suggests that Jerusalem might be the proper place to locate “a research institute … bringing together in dialogue for problem-solving the best minds in the Middle East,” its spokesmen seem uninterested in whether the present situation offers a new opportunity to advance the cause of religious freedom in the Middle East. Unlike the Lord of the Church, who did not overlook Jerusalem in the Great Commission, modern ecumenists seem quite unconcerned over ultimate matters. In casting lots for Jerusalem, those who profess to be the friends of freedom ought not to overlook freedom to proclaim the good news.

A delegation of churchmen from the National Council of Churches recently called on Secretary of State Dean Rusk and trumpeted a revised melody on the ecumenical bugle: “We do not believe that either sudden, unilateral withdrawal of the U. S. presence or escalation of the present military effort is defensible.” After repeated ecumenical revelations counseling American forces to halt the bombing and de-escalate, if not go home, this momentary note of realism was sounded at long last in a report that contained nothing Washington leaders did not already know.

The report followed a visit to South Viet Nam, Thailand, and Cambodia (Hanoi refused a visa) by four churchmen: Episcopal Bishop George W. Barrett of Rochester, N. Y.; Dr. Tracy K. Jones, Jr., of The Methodist Church; Dr. Robert S. Bilheimer, director of the NCC’s international affairs program; and William P. Thompson, stated clerk of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church. Thompson was less a dove than his traveling companions, and Bilheimer—widely regarded as an echo of the Christian Peace Movement—is apparently backing off a bit from the pacifist posture of Union Seminary President John C. Bennett.

Even so, the report did not substantially reverse NCC attitudes toward the Viet Nam conflict. Its overall stance was still one of apology for U. S. involvement (“We regret our inability to visit North Viet Nam, to express the concern of U. S. churches for the sufferings of its people caused by war”; “despite adherence to the same communist ideology, control of Hanoi by Peking cannot be assumed”; is the “U. S. military, economic, and political presence … so vast as to defeat the objectives of freedom and beneficial social change?”).

The report, moreover, perpetuated the basic error of ecumenical social ethics—the idea that it is the proper task of the churches, or even a traveling committee of four churchmen, to tell political leaders when to intervene and when to withdraw, whether or not to escalate, and so on.

Indeed, the report claimed that “the presence of observers on behalf of the Christian Churches” alongside U. N. observers would help Prime Minister Ky’s government assure free and fair elections. This call for observers to watch the elections was as close as the report got to a mission for the Christian churches in its quest for “an early, honorable, negotiated peace” in Viet Nam. In fact, the traveling churchmen had little contact with the churches of South Viet Nam, where really strategic missionary work is being done by non-conciliar churches. If the U. S. presence were now withdrawn, it is likely, in view of Communist practice in North Korea and in China, that Christian leaders of South Viet Nam would be massacred and churches destroyed.

This brings to view the fundamental failure of the NCC in relation to the Christian task force in Viet Nam. That force is twofold—those engaged in missionary and humanitarian service who are not in uniform, and those in uniform and in military and humanitarian service. Assuming that the U. S. servicemen in Viet Nam, numbering about 464,000, reflect the religious proportions of the population at home, roughly 160,000 are from Protestant churches, more than half of these from NCC-related congregations.

American Christian leaders have had a golden opportunity to inculcate in our servicemen a concern both for social justice and for evangelism—and thus to develop a new generation of church members who could effectively transcend the present conflict of evangelism-or-justice. Instead, the conciliar churchmen issue specific policy proclamations along with an appeal to abstract justice (without expounding the revelational content of justice in the biblical understanding, and without really demonstrating that the specific policies they propose are a necessary requirement of a scriptural ethic) and utterly fail to deepen the understanding of justice by sons of the Church serving in uniform. Although the historic confessions of many of the conciliar churches support just wars, few churchmen have debated Viet Nam involvement in terms of justice and injustice. Many have merely been badgered into echoing—or disregarding—particular policy pronouncements (“halt the bombing,” “initiate peace unilaterally”) by NCC strategists. The presumptuous net effect of conciliar declarations that U. S. involvement on the present basis cannot be justified is to place almost half a million Americans—and particularly church-related servicemen and their chaplains—in the service of injustice. Partisan statements of the NCC-WCC policy promulgators imply that men in the armed forces are rather to be pitied than prayed for and supported. We do not say that the rightness of U. S. involvement ought to be taken for granted simply because almost half a million American youths are in Viet Nam (see the editorial, “Viet Nam A Moral Dilemma,” January 20, 1967, issue). What we do say is that the asserted wrongness of the cause has been publicized rather than established. Even when leftist churches pray for their servicemen, these prayers are burdened by an apparent solicitation of God’s aid in the fulfillment of a presumably non-Christian vocation.

The conciliar neglect of evangelism—except as a topic of discussion and debate—compounds this tragedy. In Viet Nam, if the churches were really interested, a new type of American layman could be shaped. Servicemen could be moved to earnest participation in the arenas of private morality, social concern, and evangelistic engagement. Today some radical churchmen are mainly interested in situation ethics and deplore the “purity nuts”; such attitudes do nothing to strengthen the moral fiber of young men away from home in abnormal circumstances.

Commendably, many chaplains in Viet Nam have imparted to men facing the prospect of death a realistic view of the issues of social justice involved in the Viet Nam clash and have also pressed the claims of the Gospel upon them. Viet Nam has also proved to be a maturing ground for chaplains; the liberal optimism about human nature and history, and sentimental notions about Communist benevolence and about the dispensability of force in the promotion of peace, do not long survive. A few years ago some NCC spokesmen were trying to get the chaplains out of military uniform, but the idealism associated with such proposals collapsed swiftly when denominational leaders learned what the cost would be if churches rather than government paid for salaries and transportation. The deeper cost, of course, comes from the failure to confront in depth the whole issue of just and unjust war in a day in which the ecumenical establishment calls loudly for social justice and widely publicizes partisan policy proposals without showing how revelation or reason or both lead on from the major premise to the desired conclusion.

The latest NCC report approves the U. S. presence in Viet Nam; but anybody who has served in the military knows that significant presence involves a mission and a goal, and committed forces, and not mere visibility.

Evangelical churches must shoulder their responsibility in this hour. They can help sons of the Church to rise to new awareness of the claims of the Gospel and of social justice upon every man. And men who have carried those concerns through the jungles of Viet Nam can—when God crowns their devotion to peace—help lead a nation to a better day for both the citizenry and the churches.

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