Padgett Swords and Plowshares

American Evangelicals on War, 1937-1973
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68359-107-8
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 440 Seiten

Reihe: Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology

Evangelicals are warmongering nationalists-right? Many assume that evangelicals have always shared the ideology and approach of the Moral Majority. But the truth is much more complex. Historically, evangelical rank and file have not held to one position about war; instead, they are strewn across the spectrum from love of peace to glorying in war. Timothy Padgett presents evangelicals in their own words. And in so doing he complicates our common perceptions of evangelical attitudes towards war and peace. Evangelical leaders regularly wrote about the temporal and eternal implications of war from World War II to the Vietnam War. Padgett allows us to see firsthand how these evangelicals actually spoke about war and love of country. Instead of blind ideologues we meet concerned people of conviction struggling to reconcile the demands of a world in turmoil with the rule of the Prince of peace.

Timothy D. Padgett (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is the Resident Theologian of BreakPoint.org with the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. His research interests focus on the way Christians argue for diverse viewpoints while sharing a common biblical foundation-particularly regarding the relationship between church and state, Christ and culture, and war and peace.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Padgett, Timothy D.

Leseproben

2 The Road to War, 1937–1941 OVERVIEW In the midwinter’s chill of New Year’s Day 1937 in Bismarck, North Dakota, a middle-aged man’s cold took a turn for the worse, taking his life through pneumonia. In his heyday J. Gresham Machen had been a professor at Princeton Seminary, one of the nation’s premiere theological institutions. But that day was long past, and he was now an outcast from elite society, the most visible victim of the denominational battles of American Christianity in the early twentieth century. In that clash over the nature of the faith, the conservatives had fallen before their more liberally minded opponents and found themselves purged from office as a result. Half a year and half a world away, simmering tensions between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China broke into open war at the Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing. By fits and starts this regional conflict would lead the United States out of comfortable isolationism and into reluctant interventionism, leaving America in the possession of the strongest military in the history of the world and as sole proprietor of warfare’s most potent weapon, a weapon which would bring death in the midsummer’s heat of August 1945 to Hiroshima, Japan. As this era began, Americans watched the embers of war gather strength. The United States was not officially involved in the conflict until the very end of 1941, but the rest of the planet was hardly at peace. The Japanese continued to advance into China after 1937, and the Italians made moves toward a new empire. A reinvigorated Germany began assimilating territories into the Third Reich, even if the people therein did not consider themselves to be particularly German. The Russians and Finns fought in their Winter War, and the Spanish fought the Spanish for years on end. By 1939 and 1940 many of these conflicts were absorbed into one by the German invasion of Poland. This act brought Britain and France in against Germany and, later, Italy. The following year saw the Axis in control of the bulk of Europe, with only Britain remaining both free and hostile. Spain was neutral, but friendly to the Axis, while the Soviets were not exactly chummy with their old rivals in Germany, they were willing to cooperate. This cooperation ended in June 1941 with the Axis invasion of Russia. Six months later the war expanded once more. Intent on pursuing its invasion of China without the threat of outside interference, Japan, now a full member of the Axis, attacked Western outposts across East Asia and the Pacific. ENEMIES THE SOVIET UNION As American evangelical leaders reacted to these crises and counseled those looking to them for understanding, they did not have the advantage of hindsight to know how each issue would play out in the end.1 While it is obvious that they would not have known whether the “good guys” or “bad guys” would emerge victorious, it is also true that they had no way of knowing just who the “good guys” and “bad guys” would turn out to be. With Stalin moving into Finland at the same time that Hitler was moving into Austria and Czechoslovakia, it would be hard for observers to differentiate the moral quality of Moscow and Berlin. In fact, evangelical magazine articles written prior to June 1941 were quite likely to portray the Soviet Union as humanity’s primary nemesis. Writing in April 1937 William H. Hockman said, “The terrors of Russia are so commonly known as to be virtually a household word throughout the world. From the beginning of the Soviet regime the upper classes were ‘liquidated’ (exterminated), the middle classes deprived of possessions and personal liberty, and the Christians subjected to persecutions almost too terrible to print.”2 As in this article many evangelicals called attention to the acts of internal repression within the Soviet Union in addition to the focus on Russia as an external military threat to world peace. Nearly every issue of Moody of the period had either articles by contributors or advertisements by outside organizations highlighting the plight of Christians in particular or Russians in general. Perhaps most common were calls to send Bibles behind this nascent Iron Curtain. Similarly, Arno C. Gaebelein wrote, “You can trust a vicious dog, but not the vicious Reds of Russia.”3 A year later he accurately predicted a three-part alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, but he saw this potential Axis not in opposition to the democratic West but solely as a counterpoint to the Soviets.4 Even advertisements for evangelical institutions carried this theme. One emphasized the eschatological implications of the events of late 1939. For its triumvirate of villains, the ad included not only Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini but also Soviet leader and soon-to-be American ally, Josef Stalin.5 Although the traditional conservative disdain for Communism might be a factor in this suggested unholy trinity, considering that these words were written when Germans and Russians had signed a non-aggression pact, Soviet forces were occupying eastern Poland, and Stalin was soon to annex the Baltic states, it would not take great imagination to view Germany, Italy, and Russia as three of a kind. In the same way the pseudonymous Gabriel Courier gave a half-hearted endorsement to an arrangement for the United States to sell aircraft to the Soviets. He wrote, “This move does not mean that we have handed Stalin a coat of moral whitewash, or declared the invaders of Finland clean and sweet.” He then went on to say, “Russia, if truth be told, fears a German victory more than a British triumph. She will be smart to play along with the US we [sic] will be smart in alienating what we can of her good will toward Adolf Hitler.” This attitude did not extend to any acceptance of the Soviet state’s foreign policy regarding Finland. “Nothing, not even a government action, can remove the moral stigma on Russia; nothing could wash the blood from the hands of Lady Macbeth!”6 Even after the June 1941 German invasion ended the possibility of a Russo-German alliance, the evangelical animosity toward the Soviet regime endured. There were fewer articles denouncing Stalin, but these were not replaced by pieces supporting the democracies’ new totalitarian ally. THE JAPANESE EMPIRE Japan gained some of the earliest and most consistent condemnation. Criticisms of the Japanese actions in China continued to be more common than complaints about Germany or Italy, even after the outbreak of war in Europe. Writing in January of 1938, Gaebelein complained about the loss of Chinese lives to Japanese air raids. After summarizing a news account from another source, he wrote, “Nothing like it happened in the world war. Over twenty thousand men, women and tender children were killed, so that the streets literally became rivers of blood. Systematically women were hunted down in all Chinese homes. If they resisted rape they were cut to pieces. Even sixty year old women and eleven year old girls were not immune.” His rebuke extended to the watching world, saying, “The nations, as always, stand by, saying they are helpless, while Germany and Italy lend more or less help to this program and hell. How long, O Lord, how long?”7 William Houghton spoke in much the same way, suggesting that Japanese tactics were designed to conquer the Chinese “by terrorizing them.”8 Deflecting some of the blame toward the European crisis, Courier suggested that Adolf Hitler had induced the Japanese into pushing its war against China and that the reality was being hidden from the Japanese population. He held out hope that the Japan’s citizens would not stand for their nation’s actions, if only they could be told. However, since, as he put it, the government in Tokyo was under the control “of 100% extremists,” he confessed that this was a false hope9 Raising awareness was only part of these writers’ plans for the crisis. They hoped that their readers would do something about it, as their own nation’s well-being could depend upon it. In an editorial from early 1939, Houghton urged his readers to contact their representatives in Washington to cut off war supplies from Japan, which he named “a bloodthirsty aggressor.” He complained that by continuing its trade with the Empire of Japan, the United States was complicit in its evil. “One hates to think that a so-called Christian nation like America would deliberately supply oil, trucks, planes, and scrap iron to Japan, knowing that these things will be used for the looting of China.” He also pointed out that cutting off supplies could be more than merely altruistic. “It is not impossible that the very scrap iron which America is selling to Japan today, will be the shells used on our own soldier boys not many months hence, as arrogant little Japan continues to dream of world conquest.”10 Courier echoed this call for an embargo, highlighting the very real effects of the loss of oil in particular. He then favorably quoted Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, saying, “One drop of oil to Tokyo means gallons of blood in Chungking.” Addressing a...