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Theological Table-Talk
By John M. Mulder

WATERGATE AND WAR

THE talk of virtually every table these days, theological or otherwise, is Watergate. Every day a new disclosure in this pernicious, spreading scandal seems to implicate another person, and the list of those involved increasingly includes more figures from the highest echelons of the Federal government. The scandal is many-sided, involving not only those who planned and participated in it (their number as yet unknown), but also a careful and apparent continuing effort to cover up the details of the Watergate bugging and an entire range of illegal campaign financing, political espionage, and "dirty tricks." The press, probably more than even President (Six Crises) Nixon, loves a crisis of government, and the columns and airwaves have been filled recently with dire warnings about the credibility of the government and the vacuum of moral integrity in its operation by present officials. Columnists, like James Reston of The New York Times, bemoan the absence of simple decency in American politics and the decline of honesty in governmental affairs. Others try to pin the ultimate blame for Watergate on President Nixon himself, and it is interesting that this charge has come from some of his formerly ardent supporters. Meanwhile, die-hard McGovemites rub their hands with glee, and the old Democratic pros smack their lips in anticipation of the political bonanza they hope to reap at the polls in 1974.

After all the indictments have been handed up and the convictions or acquittals handed down, the fact will remain that this scandal is probably without precedent in American political history, both in the prominence of the men involved, the means utilized, and the extraordinary amounts of money used to finance the operations. Politics has never won any awards as a field where moral integrity has been conspicuously displayed, but it clearly seems that the elementary, unwritten rules of decency and fair play, as well as statutory law, have rarely been so blatantly disregarded and flaunted. Former Attorney General John Mitchell once advised, early in the Nixon Presidency, "Watch what we do, not what we say," and by his own standard this Administration has lost a great

John M. Mulder, Editorial Assistant with THEOLOGY TODAY, is Completing a doctoral dissertation in American history at Princeton University. He is a graduate of Hope College and Princeton Theological Seminary and serves as Editorial Assistant to The Papers of Woodrow Wilson.

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deal of its moral claim to the allegiance and credibility of the American people.

Some have argued that those involved were well-intentioned men, intensely loyal to the President and willing to consider nearly any means to assure his reelection and the defeat of the dangerous George McGovern. On the other hand, less charitable observers have seen the men around Nixon as the new Robber Barons of American politics; they are both nouveau riche and newly powerful, demonstrating an accompanying obsession with power and a desire to preserve it at almost any cost, a moral callousness, and an arrogance toward dissent and opposition. Such impressions may or may not be wrong, but they fail to take note of what is probably a deeper and more pervasive phenomenon in American culture.

Before he embarked on his long and perilous assignment as Nixon's architect of American foreign policy, Henry Kissinger remarked that the Vietnam war had the tragic quality of destroying everyone it touched. His comment can be applied to the Watergate scandal as well, for America's longest, most costly and controversial war is leaving its scars in many areas, and Watergate is one of them. This war was fought with only the slightest and flimsiest constitutional authority; it was justified with some of the most contradictory rationales; and it was frequently prosecuted more intensely while the government assured the American people that the war was not widening and that the United States was seeking peace. Among Vietnam's many casualties were a reverence for the constitutionality of governmental actions, a sense that the government would respond to the will of the people, and above all the credibility of the government. In a variety of ways, the Vietnam war has undermined the basic trust between people and their government, while simultaneously breeding within the government a conviction that power once achieved can be exercised without much concern for law. The erosion of trust, disrespect for law, and disregard for elementary standards of morality have spread throughout American society as well. Witness the statistics on employee thefts or shoplifting; the amount lost by corporations through employee sabotage; the recurring exposes of corporate attempts to evade laws ranging from labor and production standards to income tax; corporate scandals such as the Equity Funding and Penn Central bankruptcies. Small wonder that a recent cartoon showed Diogenes, the Greek who searched for an honest man, gazing into a mirror and exclaiming, "I've found him!"

The striking thing is that other wars in American history have had a similar impact on American society and public morality. Following the Civil War, the Grant Administration was riddled by scandals, and the business life of the country was convulsed by

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panics brought on in large degree by the corruption of various magnates caught up in "the Great Barbecue." Following World War I, the White House was occupied by Warren G. Harding, a man whose personal standards of morality left something to be desired in a President, as well as a group of cronies who peddled their influence for personal wealth. Teapot Dome, the oil scandal of Harding's Administration, was the result of their labors and has served as a graphic example of the ultimate partnership of government and business. Even the Truman and Eisenhower administrations had their "deep-freeze and vicuna coat scandals--evidence of the demoralizing effect of war on the American political process.

All this perhaps suggests one of those proverbial lessons from history, but I'm inclined to believe that such a lesson would not prevent another war or its destructive effects on public morality. It does suggest another side to Christ's injunction that the man who takes up the sword also perishes by the sword, for the conscience of countless Americans has been wounded by the affliction of Vietnam. Watergate is the most public and publicized example of the way in which Vietnam has claimed its moral victims, as well as the countless physical victims, and the task of confronting our low estate lies painfully before us.

VIETNAM AND ITS SCAPEGOATS

IN the midst of some of the Watergate disclosures, Henry Kissinger warned that the nation must not engage in "an orgy of recrimination." While his remarks were directed at the outrage over those implicated in the scandal, he was also voicing the concern that in the aftermath of Vietnam, the American people would turn their wartime hostility toward the officials of their own government, using them as scapegoats for the deeper sense of frustration and animosity bred by the war.

The validity of Kissinger's admonition can, of course, be questioned, for the instinct for getting to the bottom of the Watergate scandal is sound, and the need for restoring some sense that the processes of justice still work is an urgent necessity. However, Kissinger's apprehension of a time of recrimination is perceptive, and his awareness of historical precedents for scapegoats is accurate. As a German Jew, he is undoubtedly aware of how the Jews served as objects of hatred and transferred guilt after World War I, but one need not look to that holocaust for confirmation of a basic trend that develops in the wake of wars. American hostility during wars has frequently been transferred to convenient scapegoats who

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have suffered the intolerance and brutality which wars breed. World War I produced a fear of communists, Negroes, labor unions, and some ethnic groups, and the tragic race riots of 1919 brought the scene of conflict into American cities. World War II produced a foreign cold war and domestically its own "Red Scare," persecution of intellectuals, and the phenomenon of McCarthyism. National hostility, once aroused, is a dangerous emotion and one not easily controlled. As Woodrow Wilson predicted on the eve of World War I, "Once lead this people into war, . . . and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street."

The difficulty in applying this to the aftermath of Vietnam is that American hostility has never been raised to the emotional peak reached in earlier wars. The enemy was never clearly defined, for either the soldiers or the nation. Were they men with guns, or women setting booby traps, or children with grenades? Were they North Vietnamese or South Vietnamese? Were they communists or people fighting a civil war? Were we fighting Hanoi, Peking, or Moscow? Throughout the war, the object of American hostility was diffuse, confusing, contradictory. In addition, the war's casualties touched a minority of the American people, a large minority but a minority nonetheless, and once the draft was circumscribed, the war's effects on people were even less direct. Even more perplexing, the Vietnam war was waged by the government as if it wasn't really a war. The troops were only there temporarily; we did not want victory; we did not stage invasions but incursions; we did not carry on offensive bombing but protective reaction. And yet, there is an undercurrent of undirected hostility and antagonism in American society, which surfaces unpredictably and irrationally, along with a simultaneous desire to forget Vietnam and all its works-to return to the time of the Waltons or the period of rock 'n roll and bobby socks.

There are words of Christ which have an uncomfortable relevance for this period of American discomfort: "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be also with this evil generation" (Matthew 12:43-45). The ambiguity and the ubiquity of evil which Jesus speaks of is the one thing that Americans are unwilling to face; we all long for that

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former house of cleanliness and order, and at the same time we ignore the difficulties of dealing with our perplexing time and its present evils.

If we do engage in "an orgy of recrimination," as Kissinger fears, it will likely be as confusing and chaotic as the war in Vietnam. This only makes the problem of dealing with American hostility all the more complex. It means that the seven other spirits which are used to justify intolerance and hatred are likely to be some ideals of American society perverted to an extreme; that the objects of hostility may be contradictory and changeable; and that the task of facing up to the effects of Vietnam will be a bewildering experience.

CIVIL RELIGION IN AMERICA

IN recent years, theologians, historians, and sociologists have been devoting increasing attention to the phenomenon of civil religion in America. The term, appropriated from Rousseau and popularized by Robert N. Bellah, describes a form of religious practice and belief which exists distinct and apart from formal religious institutions. Its high priests are generally politicians or public figures, and their creed is something vaguely defined as the American way of life. In short, civil religion has become a code word to describe the singularly American phenomenon of the fusion of religion and politics.

As the debate on civil religion has progressed, a number of issues have been clarified. The debate generally breaks down into two spheres. One is concerned about the proper definition of civil religion, its roots and development in American history, how it can be identified, its usefulness as an analytical tool to describe American life, whether it is characteristic of merely political affairs or whether it is shared by Americans generally and serves as a unifying set of values and beliefs for the nation. The second sphere of debate often touches on questions in the first, but its central focus is more theological. Here the questions are: Should there be a civil religion? Is civil religion by its nature idolatrous? If not, what kind of civil religion is best? How can one assure its proper proclamation and, practice? What is or ought to be the relationship of theology and the church to the formulation and practice of civil religion?

Both sets of questions have been extensively discussed in a series of conferences, books, and articles on civil religion in the past sev-

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eral years. ¹ The questions in the first area have a fascination of their own, but they tend to raise in a nagging fashion the underlying theological questions. Will Herberg, whose Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955) stands as a kind of landmark in the discussion of civil religion, takes the uncompromising stand that however noble a civil religion may be, its affiliation with a particular temporal order and allegiance to a given society make it essentially idolatrous against the background of the Judeo-Christian faith. There is compelling substance to Herberg's position, an intriguing amalgam of Old Testament prophetic criticism and Barthian neo-orthodoxy. It is also a note which must be continuously sounded to a nation whose history is replete with the easy identification of national policy and divine will.

At the same time, Herberg's position to some extent ignores the fact that however much theologians may rant and rave, American society like any other craves and needs a set of standards, beliefs, and values which both interprets its national existence and imparts some kind of transcendent meaning. Unless we witness a profound departure from past experience, American politicians will continue to sound like preachers and preachers like politicians. Part of the present malaise of American society is that these values and beliefs are being questioned more widely and deeply than ever before. Sydney AhIstrom, for one, has called for a new and chastened "patriotic piety," which will restore a unifying ideology for Americans and create that essential "common faith without which the bond between rulers and ruled dissolves .² Martin Marty has suggested that there are two forms of civil religion-the priestly and the prophetic; the former is exemplified by Nixon's White House worship services and alliance with Billy Graham; the latter is far less prevalent and seen only occasionally, as when Senator Mark Hatfield criticized America's involvement in Vietnam at this year's Presidential Prayer Breakfast. ³ The key, Marty seems to be arguing, lies in a creative tension between the two elements, recognizing that the instinct on the part of politicians is overwhelmingly priestly in the practice of civil religion.

Nearly all observers agree that the prophetic tradition in civil religion and the theme of divine judgment have been conspicuously absent in its usual practice. Abraham Lincoln's brooding sense of

¹ Bellah's initial article, "Civil Religion in America," appeared in Daedalus, Vol. 96 (1967), pp. 1-21, and has been widely reprinted. A helpful guide to the issues is the collection of essays edited by Elwyn A. Smith, The Religion of the Republic (Philadelphia, 1971).
² Sydney E. Ahlstrom, "Requiem for Patriotic Piety," Worldview (August, 1972), pp. 9-11, which also contains a helpful bibliography. See also his "The National Faith, Where did it go? How can we find it in 1973?" Yale Alumni Magazine, Vol. 36 (January, 1973), pp. 8-9.
³ Marty and Herberg, as well as other speakers, addressed a conference on civil religion in America at Drew University, Feb. 22-24, 1973. These papers presumably are being prepared for publication.

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God's sovereignty, despite the affairs of the nation, is constantly cited as an example of the theological potential of civil religion and its most creative manifestation. This unanimity about restoring a sense of God's judgment is also a product of the experience in Vietnam, an awareness of how religious and moral terms have been used to justify a cruel, costly, immoral war, and as the immediacy of Vietnam subsides, the call for divine judgment and national repentance will probably also be heard less frequently.

It remains an open question whether theologians should participate in the formulation of a civil religion, whether such an attempt inevitably becomes idolatry. Given the generally Calvinistic orientation of American theology, particularly as modified by Reinhold Niebuhr, there is even some doubt that theologians can avoid being sucked into the maelstrom of civil religion. In light of the danger of self-delusion and temptation of idolatry, American theology must become increasingly critical of the facile blessing of the American way as God's way throughout American history and recognize the dimension of God's judgment, and eventually perhaps, his grace. America's civil religion has countenanced coercion and cruelty in its infancy and immaturity, and out of the nation's present questioning of its identity, one can only hope for a more mature, humane, and tolerant assessment of the nation and its responsibilities.

WHO SPEAKS TO THE CHURCH?

IT has scarcely been a secret that for the past several years, theology has been in a transitional period without any discernible prevailing trend or movement. The theologies of revolution, hope, death of God, play, process, and others followed and continue to follow each other in dizzying fashion, leaving their traces behind in volumes on library shelves and in articles in this and other journals. I hesitate even to suggest a generalization about this confusing and complex theological situation, but it does seem that at least one thing is clear from recent theological movements. Contemporary theologians, despite their method or their orientation, have been virtually united in their effort to bring theology to bear on the concerns of the secular world. This aim has been variously stated, implicitly and explicitly; the agenda for theology, they say, is determined by cultural trends. The audience to whom they must speak is the society at large. The language or forms theology employs to communicate must be comprehensible to a secular culture, no longer familiar with biblical terms and alienated from a biblical view of the world. The result has been

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that theology has become increasingly divorced from the church from ministers who labor in parish situations and who preach weekly and from those who remain faithful to the regular worship of the church. As an example, the new Presbyterian-United Church of Christ magazine, A.D., regularly publishes a feature entitled "Interpreters of Our Faith." Barth, Tillich, John Donne, and others have graced the pages of A.D., but by the editorial selection, there seem to be few contemporary interpreters speaking the language of the readers. One looks hard and long for a theologian who is taking the church seriously, who is writing theology for pastors and lay people struggling to make sense of the gospel within the context of the church and their own lives.

Certainly the goal of making theology speak to an entire culture is a worthy one, embracing the kind of concern for the world inherent in Christ's command to go out and teach, preach, and baptize. And yet, there are a few assumptions behind this endeavor which may legitimately be questioned. As some sociologists, notably Andrew Greeley and Peter Berger, have argued recently, society may not be as secular as it is celebrated to be, and the process of secularization may not be as inexorable as once thought. There is undoubtedly biblical illiteracy both within the church and without, but there is also a common desire on the part of people who attend church to have the Bible interpreted and creatively utilized in the pulpit and in Christian education. The dramatic increase in the use of the rigorous Bethel Bible study program stands in rather sharp relief to the terms in which much contemporary theology is formulated.

Behind the claim that theologians must speak to the culture at large is also the somewhat dubious assumption that the culture is listening. It is an irony noted before, but at precisely the time that theologians were praising the secular society and all its benefits, American society was gearing up for one of the most destructive wars in its history. Similarly, at the height of discussion about the theology of play and celebration, the American economy was undergoing a severe and sharp recession, not exactly a period in which such themes would fall on welcome ears.

Finally, theologians have often tried to address the concerns of society as part of a larger desire to see the church serve as an agent of social change. Except in some circles, such a conception of the church and theology has been unquestioned. Resistance to this view of the church's mission is usually characterized as social and religious conservatism in defense of the status quo. And yet, it is also clear that one of the overwhelming needs felt by people within the church is not so much how to achieve social change but bow to understand and deal with the increasing pace of social change

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which proceeds without regard for the church's initiative or encouragement. This is hardly a suggestion for social quietism or a retreat by the church to its "religious" affairs. I am suggesting that theology and the church meet few needs by vaguely advocating social change for justice, humanization, and equality without giving people the resources to deal with the social change which already buffets them about.

The gulf between theology and the church is not unique to this time nor is it likely to be diminished in the near future. In fact, the "career lines" of theologians today, with the heavy emphasis on academic training, research, and publication, assure a continuing isolation of theological inquiry from the church. This cannot persist without the mutual impoverishment of both theology and the church.