157 - Saying Yes and Saying No: On Rendering to God and Caesar

Saying Yes and Saying No: On Rendering to God and Caesar

By Robert McAfee Brown

Philadelphia, Westminster, 1986. 143 Pp. $7.95.

Some weeks ago, I engaged in civil disobedience to protest congressional approval of $100 million for the Nicaraguan contras. Taking that step was no light matter for me. One reason I did it was that I had just read this book.

Brown's thesis is that saying Yes to the biblical God entails saying No to all false gods, and that the false god we've got to say No to most vigorously these days is uncritical nationalism. He justifies this thesis biblically; finds precedent for it in the Barmen Confession; and illustrates it with comments on South Africa, Grenada, Nicaragua, the sanctuary movement, and like matters.

Three themes hit me: (1) It is okay to be passionate about Nicaragua. "Human lives are at stake, and they can never be discussed in a genteel fashion, They can only be discussed with passion." (2) "Those who acquiesce in the evil done by others bear responsibility for that evil." (3) "Since it was the great failure of the German church to wait too long before engaging in significant protest, the great challenge to the American church is to avoid that failure."

George Chauncey, Washington Office of The Presbyterian Church (USA), Washington, D.C.