America was about to go to war — again — and liberal theologians were appalled. We are making a terrible mistake, they warned. We are demonizing the enemy and rushing to war. We are not fighting for democracy, but we’re about to engage in a “clash of imperialisms.” And, in fact, we are really to blame for our enemies’ evil acts. As it turned out, the theologians were wrong — but many refused to admit it until World War II was over.
Six decades later, as Joe Loconte, the “William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society” at The Heritage Foundation, points out, as we fight the War on Terror, we’re hearing the same dangerously wrong-headed rhetoric.
In his new book, THE END OF ILLUSIONS, Loconte explains that in the thirties, more than two hundred peace groups, deeply influenced by liberal theology, resisted giving military aid to those being destroyed by Hitler. Instead of demonizing Hitler, they said we should address the “root causes” of Nazi aggression. The Treaty of Versailles, they claimed, made Hitler “almost inevitable.” In other words, Hitler’s bad behavior was our fault. Sound familiar?
Even when the gathering storm erupted into a hurricane of death and destruction, they kept urging restraint. We shouldn’t fight with weapons, but with peace summits and dialogue, they said. Worst still, they refused to make moral distinctions between the United States and Nazi Germany. John Haynes Holmes comments were typical: “If America goes into the war, it will not be for idealistic reasons but to serve her own imperialistic interests.” If we won, he added, we would merely be replacing one tyranny with another.
Today, in the wake of the Holocaust, no rational person considers Americans morally equivalent to the Nazis. But even at the time, given Hitler’s lies, Kristallnacht, and German tanks rumbling across Europe, how could anyone believe that the Allies were the same as the Nazis — or that “dialogue” would solve the problem?
The answer, writes Loconte, was that “the latest fads in theology, psychology, and economics had flattened the Bible’s hard-nosed teaching about evil and its deep link to human personality. … Indeed, the fatal flaw of liberal intellectuals was what the realists called ‘the dogma of the natural goodness of man.’“ This heresy, Loconte writes, assumed that “sin resides mostly in social and political institutions”; once man is freed from them through reform or revolution, he will “rise to new humanistic heights.” Well, in all the work we have done in prisons and with prisoners over the last thirty years at Prison Fellowship, we know that is not the case.
Indeed, theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr attacked this heresy and revived the scriptural definition of sin: rebellion against God and His laws. Hitler’s rage and maniacal fury against the Jews, Niebuhr asserted, must be stopped through confrontation.
As we prepare to celebrate our third Christmas since September 11, modern-day Christians recall both the lessons of history and the truth of Scripture: The line of good and evil runs through every human heart, and when it erupts into violence, it must be fought — not with well-meaning words appealing to humanity’s “natural goodness,” but with force to keep human evil in check.
FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:
• Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, The Problem of Evil (Tyndale, 1999).
• Read more about Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”).
• BreakPoint Commentary No. 000614, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace.”
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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint with Chuck Colson” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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