276 - Man and His World

Man and His World
By Hugh T. Kerr

SURELY one of the most unexpected surprises of the year has been the exhilarating success of Expo '67 in Montreal. Unexpected-by Anglo-Saxon Canadians who never dreamed anything good could come out of French Canada; and unexpected by all who had so recently felt let down by last year's New York Fair.

It would be a mistake to teach a history lesson from an event so ephemeral, but just when despair, hopelessness, and indifference seemed invincible, Expo '67 has been reminding us that new life and new possibilities and new hope often emerge from unlikely sources. "Man and His World" is the theme of Expo '67, and we are adapting the motto in both its descriptive and hortatory senses for this issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.

If churchmen and theologians might wish to reword the theme, making it "Man and God's World," the original is more in tune with much current "secular" theology. It may also offer a clue worth heeding for the forthcoming World Council of Churches Assembly in Uppsala, Sweden, next summer, when the theme will be "All Things New." There is a new optimism about man and his world, or at least a matter-of-fact recognition that things can get done, that technology and secularity and pluralism can be aids for mankind, that traditional stalemates and old dichotomies and persistent animosities can be transcended if not solved. This is where De Gaulle pathetically miscalculated the Canadian situation, and this contemporary overleaping of traditional boundaries opens up both church and world to ever unexpected new happenings.

Perhaps it is just because of the new options for man and his world that the continuing impasse in Vietnam, the mid-summer race riots in the U.S. and the Israeli-Arab war seem so utterly and irredeemably depressing.

There are many, no doubt a sizable majority, who believe that U.S. foreign policy, while regrettable in many ways, is nevertheless on the right and only possible track if the "free world" is to be safeguarded against "world communistic aggression." And there is an articulate minority, possibly growing, that protests openly or silently against the war in Vietnam and especially the bombing in the north. But there is almost no edifying communication of any

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kind between the two factions, and this in itself is as depressing as the war with its death toll and human suffering.

Some of us on THEOLOGY TODAY have thought a journal such as ours should take a stand of some sort on such a crucial issue. Being a quarterly journal and subject to a printing schedule that requires material to be written weeks and even months before publication, we cannot hope (and perhaps ought not to try) to editorialize on current affairs. But Vietnam doesn't change! So, speaking as an individual, while writing as an editor, let me at least lay my own conviction on the line. And let it be in the form of some sentences from a statement (originating at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary) to which I have already subscribed, representing a number of theological professors in Presbyterian seminaries.

Confronted with the increasing severity and brutality of the war in Vietnam, our conscience compels us to speak. As teachers in theological seminaries of our church, we can no longer refrain from raising our voices, because we believe that the responsibility to teach, entrusted to us by God through the church, demands of us a clear word at this time. The time has come that our loyalty to God imposes on us the burden of dissent from the present policies of our government with regard to the war in Vietnam. . . . Day by day our nation becomes ever more deeply entangled in a situation which is morally unbearable and politically disastrous. . . .

We are distressed by the fact that out of small military commitments there has grown, step by step, a massive employment of manpower and weapons. Each step, over the years, was accompanied by the expectation that it would force the enemy to the negotiation table. In each case this expectation was mistaken. We are faced with the terrible possibility that the continuation of our determination to press for military victory might -result in the virtual annihilation of a people whom we profess to help through our action. . . . Daily we hear it emphasized that we are fighting to protect the liberty of a people. But we ask: what is the sense of a protection under which the protected perish? ….

In searching for a response from our adversaries, we urge the serious endorsement and implementation of those steps toward negotiation which have been consistently advanced by Secretary General U Thant: (1) cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam, (2) the political recognition of the National Liberation Front, (3) the graduated reduction of combat in South Vietnam.

The mid-summer '67 race riots also involve a depressing breakdown of communication among those who ought to know each other

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better. Both Governor Richard Hughes (D) of New Jersey and Governor George Romney (R) of Michigan have monotonously emphasized their quick decisions to quell the riots, arrest and punish the criminals, and denounce violence in favor of law and order in the communities of Newark and Detroit. No one, except for the extremists among the rioters themselves, would question that this is their job as well as their civic responsibility. But it is disheartening when political leaders disclose so little understanding of what really goes on in the Negro ghettos within their own jurisdictions. And in the case of Detroit, which prided itself on progressive inter-racial policies, even the Negro leaders were apparently uninformed about a large and explosive segment of their own people.

Perhaps, as has been suggested, it is only when things start to get better that the younger, and more vigorous who are also the most discontented, among the very poor begin to realize what could be accomplished by man in his world and how little in fact is actually attempted.

One of the reasons for misunderstanding and misreading Newark and Detroit is a general ignorance and lack of straight information regarding the socio-psychological factors of poverty existence. An instructive, and disturbing, manual on this approach is available through the Inter City Protestant Parish of Cleveland, Ohio (2230 Euclid Avenue). Published last Spring, it is a large-sized pamphlet entitled, My People, edited by Mrs. Milan C. Brenkus (65 cents a copy). I recommended it to a class of divinity students, and thirty-five bought copies. A few excerpts may be cited:

Inner-city families are not joiners, groupers, or activists in most situations. In fact, it is often baffling to suburbanites to see people sitting on doorsteps for hours, doing nothing-enduring rats, filth, undernourishment-seeming not to care about their surroundings or their future. . . . Southern Negroes, who have faced Ku Klux Klan type intimidation, are not easily led to speaking against white officials or landlords….

An apathetic person may also be an extremely angry, frustrated person, who is continually exhausted from the effort required to keep his hostility bottled up. In civil rights activities it is not unusual for formerly apathetic people to become aggressive, headstrong, and militant, once their initial fear of expressing dissatisfaction has been overcome. . . .

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A man who works as a migrant farm laborer or dish washer to stave off hunger does not conceive of his work as an outlet for his creativity. A mother who is desperately scratching for a meager existence for her children may feel that her day-to-day life is an unbearable grind. Such a person finds the "real meaning" and source of life's satisfactions in occasional episodes of excitement or enjoyment rather than in his day-to-day existence. He may "come alive" after work. Thus it is common to see groups of bored teenagers roaming the street looking for some "action….

Inner-city adults tend to command and punish rather than reason or explain. Thus children learn to express emotion or desires, not verbally but physically. Love is expressed by a hug rather than praise; displeasure is shown by a cuff on the cheek rather than by an explanation of how the child failed his parent's expectation. . . . In this subtle kind of way, verbal patterns, or the lack of them, can vitally affect a child's whole thinking process and pattern of reacting to authority.

The Israeli-Arab explosion last June punctuates, perhaps most disturbingly, the depressing realities of man and his world. The most disheartening feature of the conflict was the utter breakdown of any machinery for effecting some sort of reconciliation between long-standing enemies. Apparently today violence is the only "solution" for man's intractable problems! And doesn't this also seem to be true of Vietnam and the race riots? And what does such an absurd statement say about man and his world?

Man's will and ability to do something great about his world must clearly surpass anything that can now be celebrated at international fairs or by rehearsing the pitiful evidences of progress during the past century. It is not that nothing has been done, but that there is so much to do.