The Student Revolution

Campus unrest may become a major national problem. One school after another has experienced turmoil, disruption, violence, and even death. The president of Swarthmore College died of a heart attack probably precipitated by the seizure of college buildings and the demands of recalcitrant students and non-students whose ulterior goal appeared to be the nihilistic destruction of existing forms, with the chaos that would surely ensue.

As the patterns of revolt take form, certain conclusions may be drawn. First and foremost, it seems clear that the student war is being fought by a small minority of irrational revolutionists who have no intrinsic interest in securing an education and are determined to destroy the educational processes. Supported by a few faculty members, they have formed a more or less cohesive organizational pattern for large-scale assaults. They neither profess nor act on Christian principles.

A second conclusion is equally obvious. If presidents and deans, confronted with excessive demands—and perhaps even imprisoned in their offices—make concessions to these radicals, they set a pattern that virtually guarantees academic anarchy for a long time to come. Other minorities will quickly learn from this experience, and will besiege the same presidents and deans to meet their special demands. If black power can force institutions to make concessions, why can’t Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Italians, Jews, and others do the same? Why can’t Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians seek to force universities to establish departments of religion that will reflect their special views? Once the principle of yielding to minority groups has been established, there is nothing in principle to prevent other groups from exerting similar pressures. If concessions are granted to one group, is there any valid reason for refusing to honor the demands of other groups? This can produce nothing but institutional decadence and make campus a battleground for small enclaves of special interests.

It is apparent, moreover, that minorities can and do prevent the majority from securing its goals and fulfilling its objectives. A firmly established principle of constitutional government is that the majority cannot take away or suppress the legitimate rights of minorities; many of our laws were written to prevent this. It follows that no minority group ought to infringe the basic rights of the majority, either. Yet this is exactly what is happening in academia today. Vast numbers of students who have paid a great deal of money for their education are being deprived of their rights and robbed of their investment. Administrators who think and operate in a rational framework and rely on persuasion are particularly unfitted to handle revolutionaries. If they panic under pressure and make commitments that either will later be revoked or cannot be fulfilled, this will only lead to even uglier confrontations.

There is reason to think that perhaps the federal government has contributed to the problem by channeling into educational institutions vast sums of money that have been used to turn these institutions from a strictly educational role to one of promoting social change. Campuses have become centers of sociological ferment. They have been moving beyond the task of examining the forms, institutions, and functions of human groups to that of determining what those forms, institutions, and functions should be, and then trying to force people into patterns considered desirable. It almost seems that many a campus has ceased to be an arena for the rational examination of competitive views and instead tends to promote a particular view that has hardened into a cultic conviction—and is backed by a passion to impose that conviction on society in general.

Radical campus rebels must be regarded as a threat not only to the educational system but also to political and social structures, for if they succeed on campus, they will no doubt try to repeat their performance elsewhere.

The time has come for colleges and universities to band together in adopting common principles of action to prevent student disruptions, and in laying down clear prohibitions so that if demonstrations and seizures do occur, the students involved will know they stand to gain not concessions but prompt expulsion. Administrators should make sure, however, that channels are open for the expression of legitimate grievances, and they should remain ready to remedy these.

The desire to improve society is good. But it is not enough. More than anything else the student dissidents need the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Evangelicals have often been criticized for their emphasis on the preaching of the Gospel, and have been reminded that changed men do not always change society and that unchanged men often do. Still they claim that when unregenerated men uncommitted to Christian principles work to change society, the new structure they attempt to erect has a weak foundation that will not endure. But men who have come to know God, the Source of all good, who are committed to Christian principles and are working for the betterment of society—such men can be the agents of lasting change.

Hatred Abuilding

Prejudice is approaching its worst when it leads to the malicious destruction of places of worship and education. This is what again is happening to the Jew. In what may be yet another wave of anti-Semitism, synagogues and schools in New York and Washington were hit by fires and explosions last month.

The smoldering Arab-Israeli struggle may be contributing to the latest tensions. But a more immediate focal point is the New York school dispute, in which Jews and Negroes have been the two most identifiable ethnic groups. The blacks there complain that the Jews control the school system and systematically exclude black teachers from job placement.

To some extent the urban riots of the last several years have had Jews as a target. Some Jewish-owned businesses in Negro ghettos were singled out for attack by looters and arsonists. The proprietors were accused of taking advantage of consumers with high prices and interest rates. Their reply was that ghetto operating costs are higher because of pilferage and poor repayment in credit sales.

Throughout history the Jews have been subjected to persecution as perhaps no other group has. They have often served as scapegoats in times of social upheaval But they have miraculously survived and despite their small numbers are making their influence felt more and more. Even apart from biblical prophecies, it is hard to escape the conclusion that God has had a special hand upon the Jews, and that in some sense at least they continue to be his special people.

For Christians—whether black or white—to share in the anti-Semitic mood is particularly repugnant. We regret that so few Jews have accorded Jesus Christ a place in their hearts, but it is never his will to retaliate—in thought or in deed. Evangelicals have a special responsibility to counter anti-Semitic trends and to place themselves firmly on the side of racial understanding and accord.

The Czech Quest For Freedom

The Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia has neither extinguished the Czech desire for liberty nor produced the abject capitulation the invaders hoped for. The self-immolation of Jan Palach in protest against the military rape of his country speaks dramatically of the depth of his feeling and that of his fellow countrymen.

In the reaction to the Czech plight, three areas of loud silence are notable. The first is that of the so-called liberal establishment in the United States. Their spokesmen were exceedingly vocal in support of Fidel Castro before his seizure of power and viewed him a simple agrarian reformer. Sukarno of Indonesia, who played the Communist game, was their hero. The House Committee on Un-American Activities has been their bete noire. United States support of South Viet Nam has called forth their wrath, expressed in both word and deed. But the Czech invasion has been met by stony silence. Why?

Second is the equally strange silence of some of Czechoslovakia’s leading Protestant churchmen. Strong supporters of Russian-brand Communism, they have had ample time to observe its determination to preserve the Stalinist status quo against progressive Czech thought. Their silence while some of their countrymen make great sacrifices in behalf of human dignity and freedom is shameful. We wait for some repudiation of Soviet reactionary conservatism, some call for freedom of speech and liberty of persons and country.

The third unusually soft-spoken group is the World Council of Churches. At Uppsala last summer General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake made it known that the Viet Nam resolution, virtually a condemnation of the United States, was to be taken immediately to the highest American authorities, even though the WCC is supposed to speak to the churches and not for them. In regard to Czechoslovakia, the WCC now has the duty and obligation to speak just as clearly and to work with equal urgency. If it does not, everyone has the right to ask why it operates selectively—and seemingly in favor of the Soviet Union.

Clearing A Political Slum

That the sons of Erin have long memories was seen again recently in a British court of law. Charged with setting fire to a Protestant church hall in Manchester an Irishman said he did it because “the redcoats of England set fire to Father Murphy’s church in 1798.” Evidently this mitigating circumstance moved the judge to let him off with a $72 fine.

Many Irishmen are in similar bondage to the past, whether they live in the twenty-six counties that make up the republic or in the six counties of the British north; whether they are Catholic or Protestant; whether they march with the civil-righters or the outlawed Irish Republican Army or respond to the stentorian summons of the Rev. Ian Paisley (see “Ireland: A Shabby Victory,” News, November 8, 1968).

Paisley, who served a three-month jail term in 1966, is among thirty-five defendants now facing charges of unlawful assembly. The charges followed incredible scenes last November when the center of the ancient cathedral city of Armagh in Northern Ireland was invaded and controlled by militant Protestants brought in by Paisley. Armed with staves, Paisley and his men successfully contrived to thwart a legally sanctioned civil-rights march. The police on duty (part of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which reportedly is made up of 2,742 Protestants and only 311 Catholics) seemed powerless in the face of Protestant thuggery.

This was but one of a number of recent incidents that have brought the threat of civil war to Ulster (Northern Ireland) and confirmed one writer’s description of it as “John Bull’s political slum.” This province which is scarcely bigger than Connecticut, has a higher church-attendance rate than England or Scotland. This is a salient feature in a situation in which any attempt to separate religion and politics will mislead and confuse. The thirty-six Unionist (Conservative) members of the province’s legislative assembly are Protestant, the nine Nationalists Catholic. The Protestant-Catholic ratio in the province as a whole is two to one.

The present state of troubles has involved accusations of Chicago-type brutality by police against the civil-righters; the dismissal of the Minister for Home Affairs; and counter-charges by Paisley that the cause of civil rights is being used as a cloak for Communist and Papist propaganda (he does not specify a conspiracy between the two). There is no doubt that left-wingers have jumped on a perfectly sound bandwagon, but this does not make their cause one whit less just. Catholics in some areas of Ulster are discriminated against, a fact admitted by some Protestants and boasted about by others. “We are the white Negroes of Derry,” said one Catholic.

The Northern Ireland cabinet last month agreed to establish an independent inquiry on the affairs of the province. The unprecedented possibility of bringing in an English judge to conduct it shows that at last Premier Terence O’Neill is in earnest about implementing reforms. He will need the prayers of Christian people, for his most vociferous and intimidating adversaries are Protestant advocates of the unholy war. Meanwhile, it is earnestly to be hoped that civil-righters will do nothing to exacerbate the situation. If reform is not coming as quickly as they might wish, it is a matter for real rejoicing (to those who know and care for Ulster) that it is coming at all.

The Savannah Case

The United States Supreme Court has overruled a Georgia decision that allowed two Southern Presbyterian churches to leave the denomination in protest of doctrinal deviation, yet keep the property. On First Amendment grounds, everyone can understand why the court does not wish to resolve doctrinal disputes, since “the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine.”

Although the Savannah congregations may yet have other avenues open to them, the Supreme Court ruling may discourage evangelicals concerned with preserving theological integrity. Strangely, the decision may increase support for merger with the Reformed Church in America, on which Southern Presbyterians are now voting, because the merger plan has an escape clause under which local congregations can leave the merged church with their property after a one-year trial period. A better approach was recently made by the United Methodist Church and EUB churches that felt they could not join the merger: both sides yielded on original demands and made a financial settlement without resorting to the secular courts.

The Greatest Of These …

Love is a many-splendored thing, asserts the song, and on Valentine’s Day it seems to be true. Rows of satin-covered, bow-trimmed, heart-shaped boxes of candy line counters. Dozens of long-stemmed red roses promising to snare the wariest Valentine grace florists’ windows. Jewelers, furriers, and photographers propose their wares as a better way to say “I love you.” And for faltering tongues, greeting cards will speak the magic words humorously, sweetly, nonchalantly, sentimentally, or lovingly.

In the spring, the saying goes, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love—perhaps because he was primed by Valentine’s Day. To be genuine, his love—and that of his Valentine—must spring from the most splendid Love of all, who gave the greatest gift of all.

Roman Catholicism At Bay

Pope Paul is beginning to sound defensive as he attempts to maintain the integrity of his church. Whether he can survive the present assaults and retain the historic views and structures remains to be seen.

In a recent statement the Pope spoke of those who seek to change the church in the “form and spirit of the Protestant Reformation.” Here he is making a serious analytical mistake. No doubt he thinks that the cry for Christian freedom and liberty of conscience is the root of the trouble, and he is right. But the context is quite different from that of the Reformation.

The Reformers sought freedom from an authority by accretion within the church. But they did not seek unlimited or unregulated liberty of conscience. Their goal was freedom under the authority of Scripture—freedom under bondage to the Word of God. Luther said he would change his mind on any doctrine if he could be shown that another view was Scriptural. The loudest Roman Catholic voices today want freedom from Scripture as well as from tradition and papal authority.

Ostensibly the issues at stake are matters like birth control. But among the Dutch, who indeed have raised the question of birth control, the extent of the protest is clarified by their new catechism. Some of the positions in this document, which has been under attack by the Vatican, are contrary not only to the teachings of the hierarchy but also to the teachings of Scripture. The crucial issue is biblical as well as ecclesiastical.

If Pope Paul does not act soon, he will lose by default. But if he moves vigorously and tries to stamp out dissent, he may bring on a revolution he cannot control, a war he cannot win. His recent speeches suggest that he is ready to risk all to defend historic Roman Catholicism. The outcome of his struggle with the Dutch may well be the turning point.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.