American Life, Foreign Policy and Christian Teachings

In his February 8 letter [Little Has Changed in American Life and Policy], David Truskoff, author of The Second Civil War, accuses President Harry Truman of being a "terrorist" because he ordered that two atomic bombs be dropped on Japan during World War II. According to Mr. Truskoff, President Truman did this because he was "a longtime Commie hater" and apparently wanted the war over before the Soviets could come in and take a chunk of Japan the way they took a chunk of Germany and much of Eastern Europe. I guess we have to be grateful that Harry Truman was such a "Commie hater," inasmuch as the Commies at that time were led by a nice chap named Joe Stalin.

And it's not that the Japanese people were innocents. They were supporting and providing soldiers for a government that had been attacking their neighbors for more than a decade and then had the unmitigated gall to pick on the United States. No, Harry Truman wasn't a terrorist. A terrorist is someone who steals a commercial plane and flies it into a building or someone who deliberately throws a bomb into a group of schoolchildren. Mr. Truskoff is probably correct that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wouldn't like our foreign policy today. But that foreign policy is being put together with the help of a black man (Colin Powell) and a black woman (Condoleeza Rice). I guess some things have indeed changed.

Dr. King might also be upset today about the abandonment by liberals, both black and white, of his proposal that people be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Today, the American left wants people to be categorized by race and refuses to judge anybody by their character. Mr. Truskoff wonders why Weaver High School in Hartford is all-black and Simsbury High School is all-white. He wonders why inner-city blacks have it tough. Well, maybe the fact that so many young women in the inner city bring children into the world without the benefit of marriage has something to do with it. But we can't judge people by character, right?

In the same issue of The Voice, Jeff Messenger made an interesting observation in his defense of Christianity [Three Perspectives Clarified]. He acknowledged that practices engaged in by Christians such as the Inquisition and witch hunts do not represent Christianity. Christ certainly did not instruct his Apostles to conquer the world by the sword or force people to accept his word. The Christians, as well as the Jews in earlier times, often went astray. But unfortunately for the Christians, they often went astray in a big way because European kings and emperors took up the sword for Christ and the Church. This mixing of politics and religion caused the problem. Perhaps Constantine should never have made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Emperor. A toleration law would have done much more good.

Those who understand history know that witch trials, including the trial of Joan of Arc, were political events. The Church did not have the power to put people to death. That is why, during the Middle Ages, a man in trouble with the law would claim to be "a student," because students were tried in ecclesiastical courts. Also, the Inquisition turned heretics over to the government, because heresy was also regarded as a crime in several countries. True, there was an entanglement of politics and religion. But the problem was not the politicians being overcome by religion. The problem was that governments used religion as a fighting ideology.

Those who attack Christianity by pointing to witch hunts and the Crusades appear to be torn from the same cloth as those who attack America by pointing to slavery and the near-extermination of the Indians. Neither the Church nor this country can be too good for them. But life is imperfect. And it will never be perfect. We can only strive for that. As Scott Fitzgerald once said, the becoming is more important than the being. Both Christianity and the American sense of mission have, throughout history, stood for a better way. And neither should be condemned for having failed to reach the top of the hill. The climb up is what really counts.