Watergate: A Different View

Publicity surrounding the recent Haldeman version of Watergate and the forthcoming Nixon version makes one wonder if Americans are not only fated to have lived through that sordid period but are now doomed to continually relive it. For evangelicals, one especially interesting aspect is the entry into their ranks of two prominent figures from Watergate, Chuck Colson and somewhat lesser known Jeb Magruder, who has been serving as a vice-president of Young Life, an evangelistic organization primarily oriented to high schoolers. Word Books is this month issuing Magruder’s story, “From Power to Peace”, which tells what he learned through his role in the tragedy of Watergate. Prominent evangelical politician Mark Hatfield, United States Senator from Oregon, has written the foreword to Magruder’s book and we are pleased to share excerpts from it with our readers.

Jeb Magruder was close to the vortex of political power in Washington; he ran the day by day details of President Nixon’s reelection campaign, headed Nixon’s Inaugural, and was regarded as a rising young star among Washington’s politically influencial personalities. But within the course of a few months, he found himself in federal prison. From reading newspaper stories during those years, that is probably what you know and remember about him.…

Watergate was rooted in deception, dishonesty, and face-saving ambition, a process in which Jeb Magruder, by his own admission, played a large role. The power of this book, by contrast, is its openness, its forthrightness, its humility, and its honesty. It is refreshing and salutary to read such words by one like Jeb Magruder. More important, they stand out as a testimony to the spiritual transformation which has occurred in his own life.

You will not find a sentence of self-justification in this book about Jeb Magruder’s participation in Watergate; that is because he acknowledges the wrong in what he did, and is free to say so in ways that are not calculated to evoke pity. He writes neither to be recognized as a martyr nor to gain some public reprieve for his actions. This in itself is a refreshing departure from many of the post-Watergate chronicles written by its various participants. The heart of Jeb Magruder’s story, however, is his personal discovery of faith in Jesus Christ, and his decision to orient his life as one of Christ’s followers.…

The discovery of evangelical Christianity by the secular media in the past couple of years has tended to make celebrities out of new converts who previously were well-known to the public from politics, entertainment, or sports. There is a danger in this trend; being born-again can be reduced to the level of looking like a popular fad, and the full meaning of following Christ in all of one’s life can be overlooked and ignored. There is also a danger to the particular “celebrities” who are chosen by the Christian community for its admiration; a new form of pride, ambition, and face-saving can be nurtured in them as an unintended result. Jeb Magruder has become aware of these dangers, and this sensitivity is reflected on these pages.…

When history is written, the sweep of dramatic public events becomes the focus of attention. During the Watergate years of 1973 and 1974, the newspaper exposures, the congressional hearings, the grand jury indictments, the impeachment proceedings, and the resignation of Richard Nixon were set forth as the most historic happenings of those days.

But there is another history of that time which revolves around the inner lives of those caught up in this sweep of events. In the case of Jeb Magruder, this history is every bit as important and revealing. It tells us of the possibilities for those attitudes, values, and ambitions which were at the core of Watergate to be overcome in the lives of individuals through the experience of a personal and vital faith. This is a history which urgently needs to be known.

Watergate was not merely the result of the sins of individuals. It revealed to us the dimensions of political corruption within our political system, as Jeb Magruder’s account makes clear. But the foremost truth communicated by this book is the potential for a life subtly dominated by the ways of Watergate to be drastically altered, and even revolutionized, through allegiance to Jesus Christ.…

Copyright 1978 by Jeb Stuart Magruder.

Baseball In Chicago

There were many advantages to the Washington, D. C., area—museums, concert halls, and restaurants. But if you are a baseball fan, as I am, you were left with an empty mitt. People in Washington are football crazy and many of them are openly hostile to baseball. A local news commentator even went so far as to repeatedly ridicule the great American past-time.

But in Chicago I have found a baseball home. I come from a long line of Cubs fans, and though the team may be jeered in Cincinnati or Los Angeles or New York, it provides some exciting moments and proves that cynicism is not a way of life in Chicago anyway.

Take last year. The Cubs led their division from the end of May (when I moved to this area) until the beginning of August, when they rapidly fell toward the cellar. At one point the team had won eight straight games and Rick Reuschel was the National League’s pitcher of the month. Fans had more than pennant fever; they had World Series visions. They still had them when Philadelphia won the eastern division. They just transferred them to this year—“The Cubs will be great in ’78.”

Or take opening day at Wrigley Field this year, the first time I had ever attended an opening day game. The Cubs have the habit of losing their opener, but the team is unpredictable and 45,000 standing-room-only fans watched Larry Biitner win it for the Cubs in the bottom half of the ninth with a home run on the first pitch. When he came up to bat most of the crowd expected extra innings. As we watched the ball soar in a beautiful arc over the center field wall we were almost too stunned to cheer. You just never know with that team. Or with baseball.

As George Will pointed out in his recent column on baseball, it’s a game with no limits of either time or space. What other game cheers a player for getting the ball out of the playing field? Or that refuses to end in a tie? Baseball satisfies the desire in man for an uncertainty that will reach a tidy conclusion. You know when you take your seat and the umpire yells “Play Ball” that you will leave the stadium with a winner and a loser. Somehow that’s a comforting thought. (Even the umpires are comforting if maddening at times. There’s no doubt who’s in charge when you’re at a baseball game.)

The people who attend major league games are as interesting as the game itself. Last year I saw formally coiffured women, one of whom sat knitting throughout the game and never dropped a stitch. This year I noticed three women in fur coats (the weather was nippy), some austere business men who never opened their mouths, grandmothers, and lots of teenagers. And men did not outnumber women. It’s our society in microcosm.

Just as baseball is an American tradition, so is the annual spring baseball editorial for CHRISTIANITY TODAY. David E. Kucharsky, now editor of the Christian Herald, established that. I respectfully follow his lead.

On long, hot summer days when you’d rather be outside than in, listening to a baseball game (which you can do while you work) is the next best thing. It’s a companionable, easy-going game, like old shoes or baggy blue jeans—not brand new, but too much a part of you to throw away.—C.F.

Recently I was asked to speak at our neighbor seminary, the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Shatin, in the New Territories of Hong Kong. Walking from the train station you pass numerous small shops and a series of cluttered garages, cross a series of bridges, and then head out through some rice fields. The path winds up into a deep ravine. Finally the gleaming white walls of the seminary emerge in a clump of golden bamboos. Back in these mountains it would be easy to feel you were in the interior of China, so different is the scene from bustling Hong Kong.

This school has always taken the Chinese heritage seriously. The Norwegian missionary, Karl Reichelt, one of the finest authorities on Chinese Buddhism, once taught here. The library contains one of the best collections of the Taoist scriptures to be found. The lecture that afternoon dealt with the Chinese apprehension of the Gospel and what might be the contribution of the Chinese Christians to the body of Christ. Late in the discussion an older student, who was a secretary for a large Hong Kong firm, spoke of his emerging understanding of both Christ and the Chinese heritage. He said that it was only recently that he had really come to see how it was through Christ, and really because of Christ, that he could fully appreciate, appropriate, and criticize his Chinese heritage. I was intrigued by the quality of his thoughtful testimony. So I asked him where he had gained the most help in this new integration which was taking place.

Somewhat to my surprise he answered very quickly and said that, by far, the most helpful source had been the writings of C. S. Lewis. Immediately many other Chinese young people began to nod and smile and say that this was also their experience. C. S. Lewis seems to be in a class by himself in terms of helpfulness to these Chinese youth at the very point of Christ and Chinese culture.

This is amazing. C. S. Lewis was no specialist in Asian studies; he never traveled the overseas ecumenical circuit; he was constitutionally against jumping on the latest bandwagon; he showed little interest in the organization, committees, or even the theology of the World Council of Churches. Of course, he wrote logically, understandably, and with good illustrations; and these qualities are appreciated by the Chinese. He was often described as a “rational romantic” and these adjectives are also frequently used of the Chinese. He had great appreciation for the mythic and the poetic, and this would be immediately sensed by the people who have produced more poetry than any other of the world’s peoples.

There is, to be sure, his lengthy discussion of The Tao, or The Way, in his The Abolition of Man. Most of all, there is his firm and sensitive grasp of the great myths of humanity being the God-given “good dreams” sent to prepare and point to the Myth-Fact of Jesus Christ; this completes, without destroying, the deepest insights and aspirations of various nations. He writes from the fully Catholic and fully evangelical center that knows that grace completes without destroying nature.

As I plodded back through the bamboos and the rice fields, and past the greasy garages I gave thanks for the disciplined imagination and dedicated labors of this Oxford and Cambridge professor of renaissance literature. For Westerners he has helped to unfreeze the imagination; for Asians he has shown how Christ challenges but completes their God-given cultural heritage.—PAUL CLASPER, faculty of theology, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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