Confidential

Confidential

Should scholars and newsmen be required to reveal the identity of those who supply them with information?

Generally speaking, no. So-called shield laws, which now exist in some twenty states, tend to serve a good social purpose in a democracy. Few people doubt the desirability of shielding clergymen, lawyers, and physicians in this way. In the case of newsmen, it is perhaps even more important to the public interest that sources of information be protected, lest they dry up and important data go unreported. Often the reporter is put on the spot for conveying information that, though it is embarrassing to a few, deserves to be public knowledge. Occasionally, there is risk of reprisal—even a threat to life or limb—against reporter or source if the source is revealed. These persons need the protection of the law.

Protection of scholars, upon whom the public is not as directly dependent for important information, is somewhat more difficult to justify. But there are sensitive issues in which reprisal against scholars is conceivable, and therefore extending the legal shield to them seems reasonable.

On the other hand, the public’s right to know, often cited as the reason for shield laws, can be inhibited as well as advanced by protection of sources. The identity of a source and his reasons for disclosure may be an integral part of the story. Like everyone else, suppliers of information have vested interests. Those who reveal secrets out of patriotism or moral principle warrant respect. But some whistle-blowers have bad motives, as do some campaign contributors. By law we now require full disclosure of the names of political donors. It seems reasonable that newsmen, protected by shield laws, should feel some moral obligation to reveal who and why. Knowing the source of information may sometimes be more important than having the information itself, as when Nazi propagandists paid French newspapers to carry “news stories” sympathetic to Hitler.

We support shield laws, but they can be self-defeating or counter-productive. They serve their purpose well only with responsible news media that conscientiously regulate themselves.

Controls And Responsibility

Violent crimes occur far more frequently in the United States than in any comparable nation. In an effort to stem the tide of violence, America is resorting more and more to a complex system of controls intended to prevent crimes from taking place. In the public eye at the moment are complicated and costly security measures at the nation’s airports and new projects for handgun control. While controls of certain kinds may be necessary and desirable, anyone who subscribes to a biblical view of man must be wary of the view that we can prevent crime by controlling opportunity.

One man with an excellent record in limiting at least a local crime wave is District of Columbia police chief Jerry V. Wilson: the incidence of reported violent crimes in Washington declined by 38.9 per cent in the first nine months of 1972. Testifying before a congressional subcommittee, Chief Wilson appealed not for new laws but for “stricter enforcement of existing laws.” According to Wilson, in the present judicial climate a person picked up for carrying a gun in the nation’s capital can be back at liberty before the arresting officer can finish writing up his report.

Controls apply to the whole population, but unless there is strict enforcement by judges and juries, their effect is limited to the already law-abiding. Strict enforcement means holding violators of the law accountable and subjecting them to punishment. But this is precisely what is not being done, even with the existing, allegedly lax laws. For example, if Governor Wallace’s assailant had been prosecuted for his early 1972 violation of Wisconsin gun laws instead of having the felony charge reduced by a judge to “disorderly conduct,” he would have been in a Wisconsin jail instead of trailing Nixon and Wallace. Some controls are necessary, but unless criminals can be held to responsibility, controls restrain only the meek.

In many areas, controls, if extensive enough to be effective, quickly inconvenience and encumber the whole population; in a democracy, this means they will be impossible to enforce. Certainly the trend at the moment is to substitute controls over everyone for sanctions against the law-breaker. Civil authorities must rethink their attitude toward justice and public order, and again place emphasis on personal responsibility as opposed to social engineering. And the citizenry should demand this much more emphatically. Without responsibility, freedom leads to chaos, and one alternative to chaos is control—lots of it. Another is responsibility.

Bishops Back Tradition

In a document published January 11, Basic Teachings for Catholic Religious Education, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops presents three themes as basic for all religious education: (1) the importance of prayer; (2) participation in the liturgy; and (3) familiarity with the Holy Bible. The document ambiguously says that human reason can know God, but that unbelievers need help to find him, help that can be given by the compelling witness of a faithful life.

In general the bishops reiterate familiar Catholic teachings, including the customary tendency to put the Bible in the back seat while formally stressing its indispensability. New birth comes through the sacrament of baptism, and the Mass is a sacrifice (but also a meal); yet some allusion is made to personal conversion, “accepting the spirit of Christ.” The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, but still there is a unity of all men under God, and the Jewish people are “elder brothers in faith.” Other ambiguities abound.

It is hardly surprising when a bishops’ conference backs tradition. We think it good that the Roman church in America did not simply bow to modernity, but it appears to us that the bishops have made so many concessions that they will find it difficult if not impossible to defend the positions they are trying to hold.

Shame Over Sinai

The Arab atrocities at the Munich Olympics were called to mind again by the action of the Israeli air force in shooting down a lost commercial airliner, caught in heavy clouds over Sinai and straying because of instrument difficulties. Munich was perpetrated by an illegal terrorist band, and most of the Arab governments did not endorse its actions. (Admittedly, they should have more frankly condemned what was done.) But the attack on the plane, with the resulting deaths of more than one hundred civilian passengers, was launched by order of the Israeli military chief of staff.

To compound the tragedy, the Israeli government, instead of frankly admitting a horrible wrong, initially defended its action, stressing that it was routine procedure. Subsequently it did accept partial responsibility, but Defense Minister Moshe Dayan still stressed that “we didn’t do anything to put us on the guilty side.” Although Israel offered to make payments to the victims’ families, it deliberately avoided calling the payment “compensation” lest admission of guilt be implied.

Why are most nations, like most individuals, so concerned to avoid admitting guilt and accepting blame?

The Jokes Of Lent

Christians in the liturgical churches are now observing Lent—the season of the Christian year that more than any other seems to inspire joking. People laughingly announce they’re going to give up teetotaling, lust, church-going, profanity, caviar, or pickled mushrooms for Lent. The joking probably reflects our twentieth-century discomfort with the idea of self-denial.

In the beginning Lent served as a time of prayer and fasting for candidates who would be confirmed or baptized at Easter. It can still serve a useful purpose for either liturgical or non-liturgical Christians. Why not make this a time to remind yourself of your baptism or confirmation, or whatever time you first publicly acknowledged Jesus as Lord?

And some form of self-denial would certainly be in order for pampered and stuffed Americans. It might help to remind us that those things we covet so hungrily and collect so assiduously really mean nothing next to the reality of Christ.

Wanted: $42 Million

“Seven Theological Schools”—Yale, Harvard, Union (New York), Chicago, Vanderbilt, Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley), and Notre Dame—are cooperating in a campaign to raise $42 million. The purpose is “to make theological education a more influential force in the moral structure of the nation.” A news release says: “Historically these schools have provided a significant part of the religious leadership of the nation.” Now the nation faces a “crisis in values,” and the deans of the Seven Schools have been meeting “to formulate plans and programs for meeting that crisis.” Martin Marty of the University of Chicago Divinity School declares that the goals include “preparation of a new generation of religious leaders who can transmit whatever in their religious tradition can pass the test of critical scrutiny.”

We heartily support theological seminary education. Moreover, almost all seminaries are greatly in need of financial assistance from the churches and from individual Christians, and a joint fund-raising campaign for similar enterprises makes sense. However, the announcement by Seven Theological Schools prompts some questions.

Billy Graham on Key 73

The reports about a growing misunderstanding in Christian-Jewish relationships over Key 73 has become a source of concern to me. In order to help ease some of these tensions, I want to explain my own position. While I have not been directly involved in the developing organization of Key 73, I have from the beginning publicly supported its concept.

First, as an evangelist, I am interested in establishing contacts with all men concerning personal faith in Jesus Christ. Implicit in any belief is the right of sharing it with others. The message that God is Love prompts any recipient of that love to declare it to others.

Secondly, just as Judaism frowns on proselyting that is coercive, or that seems to commit men against their will, so do I. Gimmicks, coercion, and intimidation have had no place in my evangelistic efforts, certainly not in historic biblical evangelism. The American genius is that without denying any one expression of their convictions, all are nevertheless partners in our society. The Gospel’s method is persuasive invitation, not coercion.

Where any group has used overbearing witness to seek conversions, the Bible calls it “zeal without knowledge.” I understand that it is the purpose of Key 73 to call all men to Christ without singling out any specific religious or ethnic group.

Thirdly, along with most evangelical Christians, I believe God has always had a special relationship with the Jewish people, as St. Paul suggests in the book of Romans. In my evangelistic efforts I have never felt called to single out the Jews as Jews nor to single out any other particular groups, cultural, ethnic, or religious.

Lastly, it would be my hope that Key 73, and any other spiritual outreach program, could initiate nationwide conversations, which would raise the spiritual level of our people, and promote mutual understanding.

What were these schools doing when the “crisis in values” was developing? Early in the twentieth century America had a set of values that it seems to have lost. Could it be that these schools that have indeed “provided a significant part of the religious leadership of the nation” helped to bring about the crisis they bemoan?

Prominent among the religious leaders the Seven have provided in recent years are Thomas Altizer, the “death of God” spokesman, a product of Chicago Divinity School; Harvey Cox, who received his theological education at Yale and Harvard; Colin Williams, dean of Yale Divinity School, who has said he considers Buddhism to be as valid as Christianity; Robert McAfee Brown, a Union graduate; the late James Pike, also from Union. Is this the kind of religious leadership the nation wants and needs? (To be sure, many former students at the Seven Schools, including two on our editorial staff, offer a different kind of leadership.)

Should not the public ask the Seven, whose efforts Marty calls “educationally ‘elitist,’ ” to specify what system of values they intend to promote? If, as they say, “many people remain lost in the confusions,” how will these institutions straighten them out?

As for the claim that the new leadership will “transmit whatever in their religious traditions can pass the tests of critical scrutiny”: whose critical scrutiny? What specific criteria will the scrutinizers have in mind? Answers to questions like these are most important, for they will tell us what kind of teaching institutions the Seven intend to be. Not that anyone is really in the dark about the general tone—past performance makes it seem certain that historic Christian orthodoxy will find little support at these schools.

The Seven Schools owe it to the foundations and individuals from whom they hope to get $42 million to state explicitly what their underlying presuppositions are. By their own admission, they had the chance to provide proper spiritual leadership for the country with their numerous influential graduates over the past few decades, and they blew it. What reason is there to think they are on the right track now?

The Bias In Words

Paul states flatly that “the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” This portion of Scripture (2 Cor. 4:18) is quoted so often that we may be growing immune to its importance for our everyday affairs.

Consider, for example, how, in virtual repudiation of this principle, some words having to do with corporeality have come to be associated with primary value. We talk of “things that matter” and “things having real substance,” and the idea is that these are the most significant. When we refer to that which is immaterial or insubstantial, we mean a lack of reality or relevance.

These meanings are of recent origin; you will not find such usage in the King James Version. What we have is a good illustration of what happens when a philosophy takes over a culture. Materialism and empiricism have so dominated the minds of English-speaking people in modern times that now without even being aware of the implications we talk of the ultimate in terms of the physical. What matters is matter.

Christians must seek to be conscious of such intrusions and work to resist them, for acquiescence will deter the impact of the Gospel. We would all do well to watch our words more carefully, and try to avoid terms with unbiblical connotations.

For some years there has been a great deal of scholarly interest in the relation between religion and language. This interest has led to some unfortunate tangents, but at the very least it has had the beneficial effect of prodding us to think through a bit more about the nuances in our talk. It would be well if some scholarly study were devoted to the way in which anti-Christian prejudices have influenced the development of English word usage.

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