Is America over the Hill?

“The Roman empire was declining in the days of Saul of Tarshish,” writes Taylor Caldwell, “as the American Republic is declining today—and for the very same reasons: Permissiveness in society, immorality, the Welfare State, endless wars, confiscatory taxation, the brutal destruction of the middle class, cynical disregard of the established human virtues and principles and ethics, the pursuit of materialistic wealth, the abandonment of religion, venal politicians who cater to the masses for votes, inflation, deterioration of the monetary system, bribes, criminality, riots, incendiarisms, street demonstrations, the release of criminals on the public in order to create chaos and terror, leading to a dictatorship ‘in the name of emergency’ ” (Great Lion of God, p. 6). Long before Edward Gibbon wrote his famous and partisan book on the subject, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire had become a subject of tremendous fascination for Christians and non-Christians alike. In many respects, Rome represented a summit of human organization, accomplishment, and self-glorification never again approached until modern times, when the industrial and scientific revolutions provided man with a range of entirely new possibilities. Oswald Spengler, in his book The Decline of the West, philosophized about the life cycle of nations and civilizations. His successor, Arnold Toynbee, however, recognizing that a civilization is not a living organism, refused to say that Western Christian civilization is doomed, like its predecessors, to degeneration and death.

Wherever corruption and venality in high places and the decay of private morals have been denounced from the pulpit, the decline and fall of Rome has furnished many a graphic illustration and frightening prediction. History never repeats itself—exactly—and the situation of late twentieth-century America differs in innumerable ways from that of pagan Rome. Nevertheless, despite all man’s real and imagined advances in twenty centuries, human character remains essentially what it was in the days of Paul the Apostle and Seneca the philosopher—both of whom met their death at the command of the young and uninhibited Emperor Nero. The same factors ennoble it, and the same influences debase it. Medicine has found cures or immunizations for many diseases of the body, but none for those of the spirit, such as pride, selfishness, envy, greed, lust, sloth, and despair. Thus, while Miss Caldwell’s parallel should certainly not be pushed to the point of identifying modern counterparts to Augustus and Nero, Paul and Seneca, she is clearly on solid ground when, observing similar trends in ancient Roman and modern American life, she predicts for America a fate like that which befell Rome.

In purely human terms, the decadence and decline of a society are not irreversible. The most celebrated example of averting what seemed an inevitable approaching collapse is offered by the Byzantine or East Roman Empire. After being brought to the brink of disaster by the Muslim conquests in the seventh century, that empire rose again to eminence and power, if not to its former might, and enjoyed 350 more years of power, prosperity, and high culture before starting its second and final decline. More recent national revivals, such as that of Germany after World War I, may have ended disastrously, and it is too early to know the ultimate outcome of Japan’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of World War II; but human history evidently does offer grounds for hope. It is sobering to note, however, that in each case recovery came only when the nation had been almost or completely crushed.

By some subtle logic best understood by himself, President Nixon, concluding a treaty limiting American strategic missile forces to two-thirds of those of one of our two major—and allied—rivals, has announced that we are and shall remain the most powerful nation in the history of the world. It may be possible to reverse the decline without experiencing total disaster, but wishful thinking and self-deception hardly seem to be the way.

For our part, we will content ourselves with the following observation: Paul the Christian and Seneca the Stoic philosopher both were capable of diagnosing the sickness of Roman society, but only Paul had a cure. Seneca, we are told, died as the late Lord Bertrand Russell would have all men die: conscious of the total defeat of all that he held dear, but with dignity. Paul, by contrast, died in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection, confident that the Lord who had conquered death in his own person would repeat the victory in Paul’s. Seneca’s ideals could not arrest the decline of imperial Rome, even when they were espoused and propagated by the noble emperor Marcus Aurelius. Paul’s Gospel did not suffice, either, for building and preserving the empire. The conversion of Constantine to Christianity seems hardly to have postponed the empire’s collapse. But Paul’s Gospel did call into being a world-wide fellowship far more enduring than any terrestrial empire.

At a time when the foundations of the civic order are trembling, we would rather follow Toynbee in seeking to restore them than Spengler in mournfully presaging total disaster. Yet first and foremost we must accept, by faith in Jesus Christ, citizenship in the one city “that has foundations,” and by proclamation of the Gospel seek to persuade others too to obtain the one hope that will not ultimately deceive.

The Immoral Antidote

How to counteract infringements upon religious freedom is not an easy decision.

The Lutheran clergyman Richard Wurmbrand and the Orthodox abbot Roman Braga tell how Communists have made Christians eat their excrement. Wurmbrand says people have fainted in his meetings when he related such facts. Braga writes that the Communists urinated in his mouth.

Jews are also getting more intense in denouncing their oppressors. One Jewish leader, concerned that Jewish young people are not developing enough of a sense of ethnic and religious identity, recently urged establishment of a “Holocaust Room.” Here, he said, “pictures and films concerning the slaughter of the six million Jews should be seared upon the minds of these youngsters.”

The world should be kept aware of atrocities, but excessive repetition instills hatred. This is an immoral antidote that perpetuates the original evil by extending it to innocent people.

Explo ’72

Expo ’72 was undoubtedly the largest week-long evangelistic gathering of the twentieth century. It was both thrilling and chilling: thrilling in that more than eighty thousand people gathered each night at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to witness to their faith in Jesus Christ at a time when Christianity is in retreat in the Western world; chilling in that there was present the unharnessed power and enthusiasm of dedicated young believers with the potential for turning the world upside down.

Now comes the great question: Has Explo left behind a solid base for a new spiritual offensive? Kenneth Scott Latourette, the noted church historian, observed that each waxing of the Christian faith has been preceded by a wane. The spiritual offensive that began in the nineteenth century and ran into the twentieth has been blunted, and the faith has been on the defensive for the greater part of this century. Has the turning point been reached?

There are signs that it has. The worldwide ministry of Billy Graham has had a tremendous impact. The obvious decline of the ecumenical movement with its emphasis on a social gospel without biblical personal evangelism has shown the flimsiness of any movement that is not firmly based on a trustworthy Scripture. The various congresses on evangelism—starting with Berlin in 1966—that have drawn together evangelicals all around the world and the International Congress on World Evangelization projected for 1974 in Europe tell the glad story of renewed commitment to the Great Commission. The Jesus movement, which has now overflowed from this country to others, is still another promising sign. And the transdenominational evangelistic effort called Key 73 has already captured the energies of thousands and could generate a mass movement to Jesus Christ.

Cheering as these signs are, it would be imprudent to forget that there is also a rising tide of unbelief accompanied by a grave decline of ethics and moral standards. Where God is at work, so is Satan. (Time’s cover story during Explo week was “The Occult Revival.”) Scripture seems to indicate that in the last days before Christ returns, there will be a vast and unparalleled increase of both true and false religion. These gathering forces will lead to Armageddon, when God and truth will finally prevail.

Explo ’72 may have been a turning point. But the work has only begun. Explo power must be harnessed. The spiritual Explosion that shook Dallas for five days in June can set off chain reactions to the ends of the earth—unless we’re content to sit back and wait for it to happen.

On Salvaging The Earth

In Stockholm last month, a group who identified themselves as “concerned Christian people, primarily from the United States,” made public a message of support for an anti-American outburst by Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. “Immense destruction brought about by indiscriminate bombings, large-scale bulldozing, and use of herbicides” were singled out. Such havoc is lamentable, to be sure, but it has little effect on the world-wide situation. Its introduction at this level simply served to complicate matters for those conscientiously trying to deal with the broad ecological crisis.

Racism And Rhetoric

What should be done when someone has “provoked discrimination, hatred or violence towards an individual or a group … by speeches, writings, threats, or drawings”? In a recent and highly unusual unanimous vote, the French Assemblée Nationale decided that anyone who does it in France is to be punished with imprisonment of up to a year and a fine of 2,000–300,000 francs ($400–75,000). Anti-Negro and anti-Semitic rhetoric are old if no longer popular commodities in American life. Their current decline is more than made up by a new wave of appeals to different varieties of racism: antiwhite, anti-WASP, anti-Japanese and German (on trade issues), anti-Zionist, anti-Protestant (on the school prayer and pornography issues), and anti-Catholic (on abortion), to name some of the most evident.

We don’t seriously propose that the United States copy the French law. As the influential French newsweekly l’Express commented, “The intention is a good one, even if it does not suffice to extirpate hatred from the heart.” But practical or not, such a law might bring to our attention something we seem in danger of forgetting, the evil of rhetorically provoking discrimination, hatred, and violence. Probably none of us is completely innocent. Aside from the law, each of us can profit from an examination of his own conscience on this issue. James writes, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not to be so” (James 3:10).

‘The Sorrow And The Pity’

A whole generation of Germans sacrificed itself to the dream that turned into a nightmare, Hitler’s New Order. Now everyone knows it was a nightmare. But for millions of Frenchmen after their defeat by the Nazis in 1940, it wasn’t so obvious where truth and justice lay. A four-hour-long documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity, dramatizes that history well.

Many—undoubtedly the vast majority at the beginning—were loyal to Marshal Philippe Pétain, the old general who negotiated the armistice with Hitler. Their logic has a familiar ring: “We support anyone who can bring peace.” Pétain’s ideological supporters went further, appealing to Frenchmen to back Hitler in the “world-wide struggle against the money capitalism and commercial exploitation which have their last bastion in the United States.”

We now know that Pétain didn’t bring peace, and that Hitler’s New Order was worse than that of money capitalism. But The Sorrow and the Pity shows it wasn’t so easy for all Frenchmen to see this in 1940. And perhaps it isn’t so easy for all Americans in 1972 to separate the heroes from the monsters.

The Sorrow and the Pity does not free us from the necessity of making social and political choices and decisions here and now. But it does remind us that in a few years’ time the wisdom of our choices, and our own motives for making them, may look very different from the way they appear to us today. This is a humbling and a sobering thought, and it offers us all the more reason, if we belong to Jesus Christ, to rejoice in the Lord, because thanks to him “our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20).

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

“Who will have custody of those custodians?” The old Roman proverb seems a fitting response to the Department of Labor’s proposed “guidelines” to eliminate discrimination in business based on religion or national origin (published in the Federal Register, Vol. 36, No. 250, dated Dec. 29, 1971). The abuse these “guidelines” are intended to eliminate involves “members of various religious groups, primarily Jews and Catholics, and members of certain ethnic groups, primarily of Eastern, Middle, and Southern European ancestry, such as Italians, Greeks, and Slavic groups,” who “continue to be excluded from executive, middle-management, and other job levels because of discrimination based on their religion and/or national origin.”

Businesses suspected of this discrimination can be subjected to a “compliance review,” and obliged to “undertake a significant number of activities,” including the establishment of “meaningful contacts with the appropriate religious and/or national origin-oriented organizations for purposes of referral of potential employees, advice, education, and technical assistance.” There is no cut-off point specifying the minimum size of businesses to be subjected to this kind of control, nor is any exception to be made for organizations with a distinctively religious purpose.

We wonder at the fact that the proposed addition to Executive Order 11246, directed against “unfair treatment,” unfairly and preferentially singles out Jews and Catholics as minorities who can appeal for activities to remedy their “underutilization.” What about underemployment of Protestants in Boston? Of evangelicals at the State University of New York? Of black Protestants in the garment industry? Of Mormons with the Pullman Company? Of course, the addition notes that “underutilization of Spanish-surnamed Americans, Orientals, and American Indians is treated separately.”

And why does “underutilization” exist? Clearly because people in positions of authority in business and industry have frequently shown favoritism toward people of their own background ties, beginning with family members and extending to various degrees of religious, ethnic, political, lodge, and other affiliation. But what about the custodians? Who is to guarantee that the Labor Department will not show favoritism?

Traditionally—and as defined by Paul in Romans 13:3—the civil law has been largely concerned with punishing wrongdoing. The establishment of socially viable patterns of life was left to the family, church, and school, responsible for teaching values and building moral character. In the United States we are opting for “value-free” education, society is becoming more and more secular and anti-church, and the family is in disarray. The traditional function of civil law to restrain and punish evil actions is in disfavor. Faced with these charges and breakdowns, do we really think we can create a model society by bureaucratic regulations and “compliance reviews”? We cannot even end drug pushing and drunken driving! There is no way to eliminate the ingrained human habits of nepotism and favoritism short of an individual change of heart, but there is a sure way to stifle much of what remains of economic efficiency and of personal freedom and responsibility in American business and industry.

Bicentennial Of A Liberation

Two hundred years ago, on June 22, 1772, Lord Mansfield, chief justice of the King’s Bench, handed down his famous decision that effectively eliminated slavery on the soil of the British Isles. Although slavery had gradually died out in Europe after the introduction of Christianity, it was not officially prohibited, and occasionally a slave-owner from overseas would bring slaves with him to Britain. In his celebrated decision, Mansfield held that a slave automatically became a free man by setting foot in Britain. But this decision did not have the slightest effect on slavery in the overseas colonies.

Not until 1811 did William Wilberforce—who had been deeply influenced by John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace”—succeed in getting Parliament to ban the slave trade; in 1833 the decision was reached to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire over a six-year period. Abolition in the United States came about only through the Civil War (although slavery was not the only issue in that war).

Limited though it was, Lord Mansfield’s 1772 decision was a major step in recognition of the principle that one human being should not hold another in bondage. It is a sad commentary on the way in which material interests often outweigh moral ones that emancipation came in England—where slaves were a rare curiosity—half a century earlier than elsewhere in the British Empire, where they constituted valuable property. But when it did come throughout the empire as well, it was through the determination and dedication of Christians such as Wilberforce.

We may ponder the fact that, after Christianity had become the generally accepted creed of Europe, it took many centuries to abolish human slavery. But we ought also to reflect on this: where Christianity has been rejected as the guiding principle of society, it has taken no time at all to reintroduce slavery. The infamous institution of the slave-labor camp in modern totalitarian states, with its millions of victims past and present, comes naturally enough to political rulers who think they will never have to give an accounting of themselves to God.

Not Ashamed

In that most massively theological of his writings, the Epistle to the Romans, Paul proclaims that he is “not ashamed of the Gospel” (1:16). This is an attitude that many of us emulate but often fail to achieve. Confronted with the wisdom, power, and glory of this world, as exemplified in the brilliance of science, government, finance, or the entertainment world, many of us timidly retreat. Instead of challenging the “pride of life,” we confine ourselves to our little circle, consoling ourselves in our withdrawal with the thought that “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4). Despite the Apostle’s admonition and example—as he confronted both the wise and the mighty of his day, even when in chains—we often act as though we really are ashamed of the Gospel. How can we muster the courage not to be?

Unlike most of the epistles, the rich but mysterious epistle to the Hebrews does not inform us of its author’s identity. Therefore, of course, it would serve little purpose for him too to proclaim himself, unknown, “unashamed,” as Paul does. But Hebrews deals with shame or embarrassment in a different way. It lays before us the wonderful mystery that Jesus Christ and God himself are not ashamed of us. Jesus, we read, has one origin with us. This is, of course, the teaching known as the doctrine of the Incarnation, and expressed thus in the Creed of the Council of Chalcedon (451): “Of one substance with us in his humanity.” Of this Jesus it is written, “That is why he is not ashamed to call them [that is, us] brethren” (Hebrews 2:11). Having identified himself with us in assuming our human nature, having suffered and been tempted like us (though without sin, Heb. 4:15), he presents us to the Father not shamefacedly, as though his mission had produced “a sorry catch,” but with confidence: “Here am I, and the children God has given me” (Heb. 2:13).

In a different context in the same epistle, we learn that “God is not ashamed to be called their God” (11:16). This declaration refers specifically to Old Testament figures often called “heroes of the faith.” In the context it is not the faith and life even of those “heroes” that explains the mysterious statement, “God is not ashamed,” as though their conduct justified him; it is something God himself has done—“he has prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:16). The implication seems to be that God will not be confounded or embarrassed by the trust of those who have believed in him.

Chapter two makes it clear that Jesus is not to be ashamed of what we might call the shabby quality of those he leads to glory, because he knew from the start what we are like. God the Father is not ashamed, because before trust was placed in him, he had already decreed that it would not be misplaced. If (or should we say when) we act ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, let us draw renewed confidence and fresh courage from the fact that Jesus Christ is not ashamed of us and that God the Father is not put on the spot by the trust and hope we place in him.

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