The Temper of World Protestantism
FITCH, ROBERT E.
Two documents preview next week's meeting in Evanston The Temper of World Protestantism By Robert E. Fitch Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion When the World Council of...
...It puts political power in the place of God...
...Naturally, American Protestantism has had its quota of consistent followers of the Communist-party line...
...The theological question cannot be debated here...
...In that same year, its commission on international affairs, while calling for the outlawing of atomic weapons, nevertheless insisted that "any plan to outlaw atomic weapons must be based upon effective measures of inspection, and any system of inspection must provide for continuous international supervision...
...For instance, one-and-a-half pages are given to the view of Professor Hromadka of Czechoslovakia that Christians must humbly accept Communism as a judgment upon the iniquities of a pre-Communist and allegedly Christian society...
...In what follows here, I shall attempt only to clarify the context within which some of the issues emerge...
...This belief in the supreme obedience to God, however, is not incompatible with a belief in the legal and institutional separation of church and state, and is surely a part of what distinguishes a democratic society from a totalitarian one...
...The other three are theological: the denial of the sovereignty of God, the belief in proletarian messianism, the belief that economic adjustments can abolish sin...
...2. The vast body of American Protestants are categorically anti-Communist and categorically antifascist...
...Naturally, the simon-pure secularist, who wants to make an idolatry out of Americanism or capitalism or even democracy, will be shocked by the rigorous subordination of his absolute to the religious absolute...
...3. Rarely in the history of American Protestantism has there been such an explicit awareness of the intimate relationship between its religious heritage and the principles of political democracy...
...There have been individuals like J. B. Matthews and the Reverend Daniel Poling...
...Another feature of the Christian perspective is that it proclaims that loyalty to God stands above loyalty to the slate, or to any social, political or economic system whatsoever...
...There are groups like Spiritual Mobilization and Christian Economics that wish to capture Protestantism for the support of a type of reactionary capitalism which in its theoretical outlines comes closer to the doctrines of philosophic anarchism than to anything to be found in Adam Smith...
...The real scandal is not that they have spoken, but that they have received so ready a hearing in so many quarters...
...in discussing the error of Marxism, it asserts that "the Church and even Christian must acknowledge their full share of guilt for ineffectual preaching and practice of equity that has helped to open the way for Communist attacks...
...We must remind ourselves, finally, that the World Council is a sort of UN of world Protestantism...
...These two are listed along with Marxism, religious nationalism and atheistic existentialism as alternatives to the Christian hope...
...Thus, "the Christian can welcome a sober humanist as colleague in many common tasks, and thank God for his human compassion and disinterested service...
...Also, in treating of Marxism as one of the alternative hopes of the world, the Report concludes by condemning it on five counts...
...If outsiders are bewildered and sometimes irked by the contents of the Report and the Surveys, they may take comfort in the thought that they share these feelings with many persons within the Protestant fellowship itself...
...But they are always prepared staunchly to defend that society which must effectively enshrines the Biblical principles of liberty, justice, righteousness and truth...
...Secularists as well as many liberal Protestants in the United States are puzzled by the eschatological element in the treatment of Christ as the hope of the world...
...It denies the existence of absolute moral standards...
...But there is absolutely nothing in the context to suggest that these alternatives are equal to one another in value or in lack thereof...
...The resentment of the great majority of American Protestants against this situation is a profound one...
...Naturally, any document put out by the World Council is a diplomatic document, exhibiting certain common affirmations of faith but also reflecting the compromises that are inevitable in such a large gathering...
...Moreover, while all these are alternatives to the Christian hope as faiths, they need not exclude each other as programs of action...
...And they must be more careful than is the United States in the UN not to allow the weight of superior institutional resources to appear to coerce their brethren...
...But the evidence is clear that these have been extraordinarily few in number...
...They do not even occupy a ?position of pre-eminent prestige, in spite of the distinguished leadership they have given to it...
...Whatever one thinks of all this, there are three things which can be confidently said about American Protestantism at this point: 1. The great body of American Protestants organized as the National Council of Churches intend to remain in fellowship with the World Council of Churches...
...A firm faith in the final consummation at the end of history need not devitalize, but may actually strengthen, the passion for Christian social action now...
...It therefore sees fascism as a graver threat to our internal, domestic situation than native American Communism...
...Similarly, in the discussion of racial conflict there is an exposition of the views of those who believe in some measure of racial segregation, although the main document is strongly on the side of the Christian witness against racialism...
...There is debate about the first and the second coming of Christ, about the treatment of free enterprise and the role of the state, about the relative weight given to the perils of Communism and anti-Communism, about the values of Western civilization...
...In July 1950, this same Committee commended the UN for its prompt decision "to meet this aggression [in Korea] and for authorizing a police measure which every nation should support...
...The motives of those who have wished to exploit this temporary frailty seem to range through private pique and personal ambition, prejudices that are theological or economic, enmities that are institutional, and even the mawkish effort to heighten one's repentance for previous derelictions from the democratic faith by smearing as many others as possible...
...One is the Report of the Advisory Commission on the main theme, Christ—The Hope of the World...
...In July 1949, its Central Committee condemned Communism in blunt language: "The totalitarian doctrine is a false doctrine...
...The treatment of atheistic existentialism, for instance, is an extraordinarily sympathetic one...
...They propose to be vocal and active in resistance to such evils...
...The other thing to remember is that the large central body of American Protestantism, associated in the National Council of Churches and in the World Council of Churches, has been the object of peculiarly vicious and irresponsible charges of Communism by interested parties...
...Nevertheless, the record of the World Council in this matter is abundantly clear...
...This involves giving as much weight to the second coming of Christ as to his first coming, as much to the climactic fulfillment of his Kingdom at the end of history as to the expectations for its proximate realizations on earth...
...Surely their own experience warrants them in the conviction that an hysterical and unscrupulous anti-Communism can be a grave threat to our society...
...The second and third of these commitments are more explicit in their bearing on current issues than the declarations of any other world organization of Christians...
...It should be clearly understood that loyalty to God, for the Protestant, is not equated with loyalty to the church as an institution...
...But this is followed by four pages on the techniques of "Christian Resistance to Communist Ideology" behind the Iron Curtain...
...The Report therefore asserts that "inequality, discrimination, injustice, reliance on naked power, exploitation and aggression are not absent from democracies' ; and...
...Whatever may be the force of such arguments to others, let us understand that to Protestant piety this sort of condemnation is definitive...
...In this council, the American churches hold no veto...
...Already the Study Department of the World Council, in its bulletin for June 1954, has published assorted criticisms of the two documents...
...The church, as much as the state and the economic order, stands under the judgments of a just and righteous God...
...Reinhold Niebuhr is the best known expositor, in this country, of the dialectical tension within the Christian hope, and no one has ever accused him of indifference to social issues...
...Two documents preview next week's meeting in Evanston The Temper of World Protestantism By Robert E. Fitch Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion When the World Council of Churches convenes in Evans-ton, Illinois on August 15, the delegates will have two documents in hand...
...They do not like the methods of McCarthy...
...Two of these are ethical: the doctrine that the means justifies the end, the totalitarian denial of human freedom...
...It molds the minds of the young in a pattern opposed to the message of the Gospel...
...Protestants are as unwilling to make an idolatry out of democracy as they are out of capitalism or Communism or socialism...
...While the matters cited above may be baffling to some persons, it is probable that others will take positive offense at the way the Report treats democratic humanism and scientific humanism...
...Two things may be borne in mind at this point...
...Since they do not take their principles from Senator Knowland, they are not going to secede from that fellowship because it may embrace persons, groups and opinions that are distasteful to them...
...and it is now the case that practically all of them have been labeled, isolated and, so far as ecclesiastical discipline permits, neutralized...
...It will lead next to a look at the treatment of democratic humanism and scientific humanism as alternative faiths in our world...
...This doctrine is part of the historic teaching of the church...
...This section is dealing not with international affairs, but with the situation within the United States...
...And, finally, it involves a reminder of the irreducibly diplomatic character of this convention, which is a sort of UN of world Protestantism...
...While Protestants over the world hold in common certain basic affirmations of faith, they have not yet surrendered their talents for individualism and for diversity of views...
...The Christian faith also requires that, when we confront the social evils of the world, we should ask first of all about our own guilt and responsibility in the matter...
...The other is Six Ecumenical Surveys, which presents the problems of church unity and disunity, of evangelism, of social issues in a responsible society, of international affairs, of racial and ethnic tensions, and of the vocation of the laity...
...There is also the so-called American Council of Churches, which pretends to represent theologically conservative Protestantism in the United States (actually represented best by the National Association of Evangelicals), which is headed by a pastor expelled from the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and which manages to get some attention from the press by giving out grotesquely exaggerated figures about its own supporting membership...
...None of this implies that Protestant Christians are ready to reject either democracy or the church, but it does mean that their loyalty to these institutions is a critical one "under God...
...This will focus attention first of all on certain features of the Christian religious perspective...
...It also necessitates a consideration of the handling of Communism and anti-Communism, especially in the section on "Social Thought and Action in the United States...
...They do not like the methods of Malenkov and Mao...
...A third feature of the Report and Surveys which may give concern to many persons lies in the treatment of Communism...
...Two points need to be made, however...
...It remains a fact, nevertheless, that the section on "Social Thought and Action in the United States" puts its concluding emphasis on the "fanatical negativism" that arises out of anti-Communism in this country...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 32
