Worldview 1959-03: Vol 2 Iss 3

il Barth, one of the most eminent theologians
fi century, has reaffirmed his stand against
eligious commitment in the Cold War. In a
er to a Pastor in the German Democratic
public,” reported in the New York Times last
jonth, he has again insisted that if it is to be
to its vocation, the Christian Church must
tain neutral in the present world struggle.
But Barth seems to have moved beyond the
utralism he expressed in his famous 1948 lec-
t, “The Church Between East and West.”:
y, ten years later, he clearly is neutral against
United States. The East German pastor had
asked him whether Christians living under Com-
mist regimes might properly seek to “pray
“way” their oppression. “Might you not fear,” the
I ologian replied, “that He might grant your
‘prayers in the fearful fashion of letting you awake
‘one morning among the fleshpots of Egypt as a
bounden to the American way of life?”
answer, with all that it implies, has
‘tned considerable anguish among many Chris-
‘tins. In West Germany Barth has been criticized
for proclaiming “the worst kind of neutralism.”
Inthe United States The Christian Century (in
an editorial quoted elsewhere in this issue) asks:
y is this man, who condemned Naziism, blind
to the evils of totalitarianism when it appears in
its Communist form?” In both Europe and Amer-
ita, the controversy that the new Barth pro-
nouncement has aroused takes us back to the
heart of the question of religion and international

~As Reinhold Niebuhr has stated, Karl Barth is
certainly “neither a ‘primitive anti-Communist,’
Ror a ‘secret pro-Communist.’ He is merely a very
eminent theologian, trying desperately to be im-
partial in his judgments.” The premise of Barth’s
Reutralism is basic to his theological thought: the
transcendence of God over all times and places,
and the duty of the Church to witness to, and to
judge, all times and places, including, most es-
pecially, those times and places which seem most
congenial to the Church.

WORD FOR KARL BARTH

worldview

RNAL OF RELIGION AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Beware of the seducer, Barth warns Christians
in the West. When an age, a culture, a State seem
to offer you the most, that is when you, as Chris-
tians, are in deadly danger. And to Christians in
the East he seems to offer the ancient comfort:
“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church.”

The first thing we must state quite clearly to
those who demand that the Church take sides
between East and West, Barth wrote ten years
ago, is “that the Church is not identical with
the West, that the Western conscience and judg-
ment is not necessarily the Christian judgment.
Just as the Christian judgment and the Christian
conscience are not necessarily the Eastern con-
science and judgment either.” And addressing
those in the West who point to the official athe-
ism of the East as reason for a religious-political
Crusade he asked: “What should the Church do?
Join in a general Eastern front as the representa-
tive of the special interests of the Divine?”

No, he answered, religion can have nothing to
do with a “partisan” Crusade against Commu-
nism. “Not a Crusade but the word of the Cross
is what the Church in the West owes to the god-
less East, but above all to the West itself.” And
he warned, then as now, that if we pray for the
destruction of the bulwarks of Communism, “then
we shall have to pray in the same breath for the
destruction of the bulwarks of the Western anti-
Christ as well.”

Theologically, Barth’s position seems unassail-
able. Religion, ultimately, is transcendent or it
is nothing. The Church in every age must say a
firm No to every invitation to become a kind of
pampered, flattered courtesan of the State or of
political camps. Many of the criticisms of Barth’s
position, from Christian sources, seem to miss
this, Barth’s essential truth. And this is a truth
that needs constant retelling in societies where
religion and a partisan “patriotism” are too often

confused.

volume 2 number 3

The Christian Churches—both Protestant and
Catholic—have not made this confusion in their
official pronouncements. Despite strong pressures
and criticisms, the World Council of Churches
has consistently refused to identify its cause with
the political cause of the West. And the Church
of Rome (which politicians love to praise as “the
West's greatest ally against Communism”) has
very carefully insisted that its mission is in no
way tied to the military-political objectives of
Western power.

But some individual (and also highly-placed )
Churchmen, both Protestant and Catholic, have
spoken and written as though God had taken a
desk in the U.S. State Department, and they have
seemed to imply that any questioning of State
Department policies—for example its China pol-
icy—is somehow a questioning of the Eternal
Decrees. For all such Churchmen, Barth’s posi-
tion should come as a thundering reminder of

essential religious truths. One might say, indeed, -

that only those Churchmen who have remem-
bered these truths in their own situations, who
have refused to tie religion to political objectives
and who have tried to speak religion’s judging
word to national pretensions, have any right now
to criticize Karl Barth.

It is not in the theological essentials of his po-
sition that Barth is open to criticism. Unpleasant,
inexpedient as these may sound to most Western
—and perhaps to some Eastern—ears, they are
hard truths that religion forgets at its own peril.
It is rather (and “of course” ) in his political dicta
that the theologian invites the criticism, not of
“bad faith” or “pro-Communism,” but rather of
an astounding naiveté.

Barth seems quite incapable of distinguishing
any middle ground of relative justice in the cur-
rent struggle between East and West. He sees,
quite rightly, that the West as well as the East
is under God’s judgment, and he sees, again
quite rightly, that religion must proclaim that
judgment to Washington, Paris and Bonn as well
as to Moscow. But because he sees these things,
he can see nothing else. Because he cannot say
Yes or No to either side, he can say nothing—
except to pronounce a transcendent plague-on-
both-your-houses. He is politically irresponsible
because he cannot utter the “perhaps” and the
“maybe” that are the necessary vocabulary of po-
litical art.

2

Karl Barth, however, is not a statesman, or
even a political amateur. He is a theologian, and
it is as a theologian that he speaks. In fact, his
new “Letter” makes it clear that he can speak
only as a theologian. In the dense forest of po-
litical relativities he is unable to distinguish one
injustice, one hypocrisy, from a worse injustice
and a worse hypocrisy. Because all the roads are
twisted, he cannot see that some give a chance,
at least, for freedom, and others lead only to regi-
mentation and death.

But, stripped of its serious political naiveté,
Barth’s continued insistence on the ultimate free-
dom of religion in the world struggle, on the
urgency for religion’s examining and challenging
the illusions of the West as well as of the East, is
very relevant indeed. And it is a position for
which we can all be grateful.

McCARTHYISM REVISITED

Last month the Saturday Evening Post ran an
interesting editorial. Its rather pugnacious title
asked: “Who Says 38,000,000 Protestants Want
to Recognize Red China?” The Post supplied the
answer in the editorial’s lead paragraph. It was,
it seems, the Worker—that tired weekly whisper
of the American Communist Party—that said this
startling thing.

And why did the Worker say it? According to
the Post, it was because of the November meet-
ing in Cleveland of the World Order Study Con-
ference of the National Council of Churches. At
this meeting the delegates passed a resolution
favoring U.S. recognition of Communist China
and its admission to the United Nations.

The Post’s implication is clear: by this resolu-
tion the Conference gave aid and comfort to the
Worker. Otherwise, why did the Post have to
seek out its information from the Communist
paper, and, in reporting it editorially, imply that
the news was published in the Communist paper
as a kind of scoop? After all, the New York Times
gave considerable coverage to the Conference,
and its China resolution, at the time of the meet-
ing in November, and reports on the proceedings
appeared in most of the nation’s religious press.
But reporting stories as “from the Worker” is an
old trick of those who wish to insinuate that
something is Communist-tainted—a trick well
taught, in his day, by the master of such insinua-
tion himself.

well

jp the magazines

“The Cult of the ‘American Consensus’” by John
Higham (Commentary, February) is an extended
consideration of the “new look” in American histori-
cal scholarship. In the work of contemporary his-
torians, notably Daniel J. Boorstin, the author finds
an interpretation of the American past which differs
significantly from the older generation of Turner,
Beard and Parrington. The earlier view of American
history as a story of cleavage and conflict (“East vs.
West; . . . farmers vs. businessmen; . . . city vs.
country; property rights vs. human rights; Hamilton-
ianism vs. Jeffersonianism”) has given way to a
monistic image of stability, continuity and flow: “In-
stead of two traditions or sections or classes deployed
against one another all along the line of national
development, we are told that America in the largest
sense has had one unified culture. Classes have turned
into myths, sections have lost their solidarity, ideol-
ogies have vaporized into climates of opinion. The
phrase ‘the American experience’ has become an in-
cantation.”

The concept of a “consensus” has further ramifica-
tions. The perennial issue of our neglect of theory for
practice in the realm of politics has received new
emphasis, according to Professor Higham; in Boor-
stin’s assertion that the supposed intellectual defi-
ciencies of the American tradition were in reality
proofs of practical virtue and social vigor, he cites
evidence of a new conservatism in historiography as
opposed to the older progressive approach. It is a
conservatism that evokes the pragmatic faith of James
and Dewey with the difference that the old belief in
ideas as “precious tools for attaining practical ends”
is abandoned. “For Boorstin . . . thought does not
guide behavior; behavior defines thought or makes it
unnecessary .. .”

This “larcenous seizure of pragmatic attitudes for
the sake of a conservative historiography” has come
about, in Professor Higham’s opinion, through the
attempt, over the past ten years, of historians (Kirk
and Rossiter as well as Boorstin) to mount a tradi-
tion of conservative thought to compete with that of
the liberals. But the competition was seen to lack
ideological content, and the new view of history,
“instead of upholding the role of the right in America,

- - merges the left with the right. It argues that
America has ordinarily fused a conservative temper
with a liberal state of mind. It displays, therefore,
the homogeneity and the continuity of American cul-
ture.”

Richard Lowenthal’s report on Berlin, “The Cross-
roads,” which appears in the February issue of En-
counter, probes the motives behind the Soviets’ new

post-Stalin policy of “crisis creation,” and suggests
some counter-moves for the West that would be more
effective than its present diplomatic and military in-
sistence on “stability” and “status quo.” Mr. Lowen-
thal writes: “Khrushchev’s revival of the Cold War is
the continuation of co-existence diplomacy by differ-
ent means. He uses military threats not because he
wishes to resume military expansion in the heart of
Europe—a lunatic policy, the risks of which he fully
appreciates—but because he wants to lift the double
mortgage of Western political nonacceptance [of
East Germany] and of the ring of Western mili
bases from the conquests Stalin bequeathed to his
heirs.”

Western response has been “negative and incon-
sistent .. . Mr. Khrushchev has challenged the West
either to preach what it practices or to practice what
it preaches.” But, while our policy must broaden to
meet every possibility—including that of a blockade
—we must beware of negotiating along the lines
which Khrushchev has used to define the “Berlin
question.” “By focusing attention on the status of
Berlin, Mr. Khrushchev is seeking to build up the
suggestion that the position of this city is the one
anomaly that requires a solution in the interest of
peace. The moment we accept this suggestion, the
moment we agree to negotiate a separate new solu-
tion for Berlin, we take the wrong turning at the
political crossroads—the turning that leads to perma-
nent acceptance of the status quo of German and
European partition, and hence to a major and pos-
sibly decisive defeat for the West.”

The February 7 issue of the Saturday Review car-
ries an article by Adlai Stevenson on the moral chal-
lenge before the West today.

It is Mr. Stevenson’s belief that “the quality of our
moral response has become the decisive issue in
politics,” for the reason that “most of the major
problems of our day present themselves in moral
terms, and are probably insoluble without some stir-
ring of generosity, some measure of vision.” Among
these problems: the existence of poverty within our
own borders and without; the rights and status of
colored peoples and their susceptibility to Commu-
nist ideals of “brotherhood.” The task that these chal-
lenges impose upon us requires that we assume a
responsibility which extends beyond the realm of per-
sonal morality. “For no democratic system can sur-
vive without at least a large and active leaven of
citizens in whom dedication and selflessness are not
confined to private life, but are the fundamental prin-
ciples of their activity in the public sphere.”

PAMPHILUS

3

THE REVOLUTION IN CUBA

It Symbolizes a New Sweep of Democracy in Latin America

James Finn

The exchange of criticism that swept back and forth
between Cuba and the United States early this year
caught many people in both countries largely by sur-
prise, The victorious rebel leaders and the Cuban
people were disconcerted when even Americans who
welcomed the overthrow of General Fulgencio Ba-
tista criticized harshly the rapid trials and executions
of those who had been imprisoned as war criminals.
And Americans were taken aback at the resentment
with which their criticism was met, and often slightly
bewildered to find that the resentment has been
building up for years.

This mutual criticism, it becomes increasingly
clear, marks a watershed between two views of
Cuba: the definite but distorted picture presented to
the United States when Batista was dictator, and the
shape of present Cuba which is only gradually
emerging out of the successful revolution and which
is yet to be sharply defined.

Almost as soon as I arrived in Havana it became
obvious that practically all Cubans, from Fidel
Castro to the cab drivers, felt impelled to correct
misconceptions they attributed to the American peo-
ple. Only misinformation, they felt, could account for
the critical sentiments so prevalent in the United
States.

This was strikingly evident during the great rally
which formed to hear Castro speak from the Presi-
dent’s Palace. As he spoke of the terror and corrup-
tion of the Batista regime, of the difficulties of the
insurrectionist rebels and the ideals of the revolu-
tionary government, the crowd reacted enthusiasti-
cally. And when he asked if they approved of the
conduct of the war trials the response was loud and
prolonged. This, Castro said, was a manifestation to
the world of “the will of the people,” by which the
new government would be guided. He hoped that
the several hundred foreign newsmen who had been
assembled there and had seen this demonstration
would return to their respective countries to clear
up the falsehood about Cuba.

Mr. Finn, an associate editor of The Commonweal,
is one of the American journalists who covered
the recent trials in Cuba.

4

After asserting defensively that the present regime
had no reason to defend itself before indictments
from abroad, he launched into an explanation and a
defense of the “revolutionary justice” that was being
practiced. The prisoners, he stated, were guilty of
the most gross and inhuman crimes. The aftermath
of the revolution was more controlled and orderly
than any other revolution one could call to mind
only because the people trusted the rebels swiftly to

‘mete out justice. If these trials were not held, the

government would be responsible for the havoc that
would surely follow. The trials themselves might well
be compared to the Nuremberg trials held by the
victorious Western powers. Further, the United
States had forfeited the right to criticize because it
had for so long continued support to Batista, and to
this day supported corrupt regimes in the Dominican
Republic and Nicaragua. Let these faults be remedied
before criticizing those of others.

These brusque and repeated assertions, the ex-
pression of an exposed sensitivity and a desire to ap-
pear justified in world opinion, were also evident,
though to a lesser extent, in Castro’s press conference.
But here he was preceded by other speakers whose
main purpose was to offer detailed and documented
accounts of the crimes perpetrated under the dic-
tatorship of Batista. It was a catalogue of horrors: of
pierced eyes and extracted fingernails; of beatings,
castration and hangings; of a range of tortures remi-
niscent of Nazi ingenuity. With these outlined before
one—and they were intimately familiar to the people
of Cuba—it was easier to understand the strong emo-
tion which supported the war trials.

And in these early days, when the newsmen and
journalists descended upon Cuba, the war trials were
the first item of discussion. The trial of Major Jesus
Sosa Blanca, which followed the press conference,
was held in the large, circular Sports Coliseum, quite
obviously so that the observers would be favorably
impressed with the due process accorded even to one
of the most widely known and deeply hated prison-
ers. That American papers repeated past criticisms

se ee ee ae ae ee eee ee ee rer Ge ee ke

bly

s0n-

and compared this particular trial to performances in
the Coliseum of Rome—a comparison that occurred to
Sosa Blanca himself—merely bewildered the Cubans.
They had concentrated on putting their best foot
forward only to be told that they were headed in the
wrong direction. This bewilderment, and the subse-
quent retrial of Sosa Blanca, are marks of the un-
certain stance of the new government and of an al-
most inevitable naiveté.

But this naiveté has been more than matched in
the commentary that has issued from the United
States, where the naiveté is less justified. The disap-
pointed and censorious reactions which Americans
early extended to Castro’s forces can, of course, be
partially attributed to poor press coverage. Batista
had clamped a tight censorship on the island and
only a few American reporters, notably Herbert
Matthews of the New York Times, broke through this.

The little news that filtered out did scant justice to
the intense terror which was the daily companion of
the Cubans. When Batista did flee and Castro sud-
denly—as it seemed—emerged triumphant under the
banners of democracy, Americans wished upon him
their own “democratic” feelings and attitudes. Since
he had thrown off press censorship and opened the
doors to the press, news about the immediate events
was plentiful. And when the rebels acted differently
from the ideals that had been established for them,
Americans were shocked. The war trials were torn
from the only context in which they could be fairly
considered, and pronounced barbarous.

But however one judges the trials and however
indicative they may be of the temper of Castro and
his followers, they will fade into the past as more
insistent and more lasting problems press upon the
new government. The first and largest question which
now faces Cuba is what kind of government is the
new government to be. And, following that, what re-
lations will Cuba establish with the United States?
These questions are of more importance to the United
States than is immediately apparent, for the answers
given to them will directly influence our relations
with the entire Latin American world.

The government Cuba is to have, at least initially,
depends largely on Castro. Although he has said, “I
am not the Government,” the provisional government
which was headed by President Manuel Urrutia and
Premier Jose Miro Cardona was of course designated
by him. And, if we leave aside the Communists, there
is at this moment only one effective party in Cuba—
the Fidelistas, those who are united in support of

their country’s liberator. This support cuts across all
levels of society; it extends from the guajiros, the
Cuban peasants, to the middle-class professional and
the intellectual. It combines large elements of con-
fidence and trust in Castro precisely because he is
regarded as a liberator, as one who opposed and
overthrew a corrupt, brutal regime. This, more than
any specific, enunciated program is, therefore, the
reason for his present support. It is clearly insufficient
to be the basis for terminal judgments about the
future course of Castro, or of Cuba.

Castro has, of course, on numerous occasions out-
lined most sketchily his political and economic goals.
What he has said has always been some variation of
the statement he made during the press conference:
“My political ideals are clear as spring water. We are
defending only the interests of our peoples; we want
only economic independence along with political in-
dependence. We must stop exploitation to establish
a regime of social independence, but always within
the framework of full human freedom.” And he has
constantly reiterated that “I am a democrat, a true
democrat.”

In more particular terms he has stated that “basic
objectives” of the revolutionary regime are social re-
forms, including social security, more and better
housing, equal land distribution, and improved edu-
cation. Before these can be fulfilled, or even fairly
undertaken, the economy of the island must be stabi-
lized. The principal industries upon which that
economy is based are sugar, tobacco and tourism,
and concerning these Castro has made some definite
proposals.

An experimental land reform movement has al-
ready been launched under Castro’s aegis. Since
there is little diversification on Cuba’s rich farms the
work is largely seasonal. Thus in 1958 more than a
third of Cuba’s working force was unemployed or
averaged only a few hours a week. This does much
to account for the fact that in a nation which has a.
yearly national income of close to two billion dollars:
for its six million inhabitants, the Cuban peasant
lives on twenty-five cents a day. The agrarian re-
form which is just getting under way will, if it
develops, do much to alleviate these conditions and
strengthen the entire economic structure.

Tourism, the other large industry, has been the
source of tension and disagreement among members
of the revolutionary regime and, it seems, the cause
of the first break in the seeming unity. For it depends
to a large extent upon the large gambling casinos in
the big tourist hotels. These casinos, most of which
are owned by citizens of the U. S., symbolized for

5

Cubans the corruption of the Batista dictatorship and
many were smashed during the last days.

Castro, who is personally opposed to gambling, at
one time said that the casinos would stay closed.
While President Urrutia and various members of the
provisional government have maintained this posi-
tion, Castro has shifted ground. In the interest of the
economy, he has said, and of the ten thousand work-
ers who depend for their livelihood on the tourist
trade, he favors reopening the casinos.

It was evidently the opposition between what
Premier-designate Cardona advocated and what
Castro proclaimed in many speeches that led Mr.
Cardona to resign. Now that Castro himself is
Premier, and the law has been changed so that his
age will not disqualify him for the Presidency, Cas-
tro’s power has been politically affirmed. But he has
also formed his first direct, vocal opposition.

Castro’s action here is worth examining, for it
seems to reveal deep inconsistency. He has shifted
ground on the gambling casinos, an issue which stirs
strong emotions in Cuba. After proclaiming that he
was not the Government, he spoke as if he were and,
when difficulties developed, he took over the Premier-
ship. Even further, the law has been changed so that
he will not have to wait until he is thirty-five, three
years from now; to be President.

Thefe are some who will find in these actions only
confirmation of their general thesis, that Castro’s
idealism was only rhetoric deep, or at least not deep
enough to withstand the pressures and temptations
allotted to a.national leader and spokesman. But it
is also possible to view these actions as the result of
an idealism that has yet to find its way in the
labyrinthian realities of governing.

In everything he has said and done, during and
after the revolution, Castro has displayed vitality,
imagination and thoughtfulness. He has also, how-
ever, been oddly assertive and erratic. Even those
who have a substantial faith in his good intentions
cannot say how he intends to cross the terrain be-
tween present conditions and his goals for the future.
This uncertainty about the particulars of his inten-
tions does not necessarily indicate insincerity on
Castro’s part. It is indeed probable that he lacks, not
sincerity, but certainty, that he has no fixed ideology
and is responding to conditions pragmatically.

This very sensitivity and uncertainty, which seem
to be a part of Castro and the Government, make the
early expressions of United States attitudes more im-
portant than they would ordinarily be. There is an

anti-dictatorial spirit sweeping all Latin American
countries. While democracy does not automatically
replace a fallen regime, in Latin America any more
than in other parts of the world, the democratic rhet-
oric and sentiment which derive from heroes such as
José Marti are becoming increasingly meaningful.

The changing structure of many Latin American
countries, among which Cuba can be included, is
creating a middle class which wishes to moderate
the traditional abuses so long associated with dicta-
torial reigns in Latin America. That within the last
four years six Latin American dictators have been
replaced is only the most striking manifestation of
the profound transformation Latin America is under-
going.

In one form or another the changes in South Amer-
ica have paraded across the headlines of our papers.
And the ambivalent feelings which many South

_Americans have toward the United States were

known and evaluated in our State Department be-
fore Mr. Nixon made his recent unhappy trip. But
such knowledge has only recently, and still insuffi-
ciently, altered the course of our South American
policy. More than once in the last several years, the
United States has been in the embarrassing position
of seeming to give aid and friendship to a regime that
maintained itself only by suppressing popular senti-
ment. When the Latin Americans see what at least
appears to be cordiality between our representatives
and those of a corrupt regime, when the new, “safe”
governments see aid go to doubtful allies while they
are taken for granted, and when they know that pri-
vate interests in the United States resist the national
development of resources in South America, it is not
surprising that they look askance at United States
protestations of good will and friendliness.

Cuba now has a new leader. He is only one of
many in Latin America and his country is a relatively
small island with a total population less than that of
New York City. But he is young, vigorous and articu-
late, and he speaks to other Latin Americans in ao-
cents they can understand. While the relations the
U. S. forms with his government will not be all-
determining, they will be influential throughout Latin
America.

A realization of these factors is not a recommenda-
tion to silence U. S. criticism or to rush all-out sup-
port. It does commend us, however, to make greater
efforts to understand what is taking place, what is
likely to take place, and to encourage those forces
which are most likely to bring political and economie
strength to the many countries that lie below our
border.

Te er Sa. ee ShClUw

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BEeRSe Yr ?

prrespondence

POLITICS AND UTOPIA

Washington, D. C.
SIR: I agree wholeheartedly with the main thrust of
Mr. Thomas Molnar’s attack on utopianism in inter-
national dealings (Worldview, January, 1959). Be-
cause I agree, I am particularly disappointed that he
has weakened the force of his argument by staking
out needlessly rigid positions on certain secondary
issues, especially Quemoy and Algeria.

Concerning Quemoy, he writes: “The military im-
portance of the off-shore islands may be great or
little. The prestige of the Western powers in general,
and of the United States in particular—their ability
to stand by their friends—is, on the other hand, enor-
mously important .. .” Then Mr. Molnar moves on
to other issues, but I do not think the subject can
be left there. It is precisely because the off-shore
islands are now worthless and may very soon be
militarily indefensible that I and many others object
to mortgaging Western prestige to their defenses.

Our prestige is important and ought not to be com-
mitted lightly. Berlin and South Korea and Formosa,
for example, may be hard to defend but they are
prizes worth defending and have symbolic and ma-
terial value that makes them worth taking a stand
for—Quemoy and Matsu do not. Neither did the
Tachens which were abandoned with no loss back
in 1955. The off-shore islands should not have been
abandoned last fall when under direct fire but now
that the crisis has once again abated, we should
strengthen our position by liquidating the worthless
and the potentially indefensible.

My second objection is to the identification Mr.
Molnar makes between maintaining a firm Western
position and the hanging-on of the French in Algeria.
I agree that France is very important to the Western
alliance. I think Algeria should be allowed its free-
dom because I think the Algerian War is draining
France of vital strength. Money squandered in the
desert war could be used to modernize the French
industries, to end the chronic housing shortage, to
build the laboratories and school facilities that would
enable France to achieve new scientific and techno-
logical eminence.

Let us not forget that it is an entire generation of
young French men and women who are paying for
the Algerian War very dearly in terms of lost oppor-
tunities in education, in science, and in industry. This

is the view of Mendes-France and, one suspects, of
de Gaulle himself. No one should believe that the
F.L.N. would usher in a democratic utopia if Algeria
were free of French control—on this point Mr. Mol-
nar is right. But likewise no one, in my opinion,
should believe that the long, bloody, expensive war
to impose on Algeria a control the majority do not
want is strengthening France or the West.
Notwithstanding these dissents to the way in

which Mr. Molnar applies his general views, I want
to reiterate my agreement with those views and to
congratulate him for his vigorous, persuasive state-
ment of them.

WILLIAM V. SHANNON

The New York Post

MR. MOLNAR REPLIES: I was surprised to read
the editorially added sub-title to my article on “Poli-
tics and Utopia” (January, 1959), according to which
in my view “power has its own morality.” This I
never said, this I do not believe. On the contrary, I
believe that power and morality are two distinct
realities (which must come to terms at some point),
and that nations and statesmen must apportion them
judiciously in their realistic conduct of international
transactions.

Worldview, in its January editorial “Varieties of
Utopianism,” and Mr. Herman Reissig in his letter
published last month, criticize me on two points:
first, that when I attack the utopians in our midst,
I “beat an almost-dead horse”; and second, that I at-
tribute to power an almost exclusive role in inter-
national affairs: “without limits,” as Mr. Reissig
States.

Now I agree that nobody has ever seen a “utopian”
in the purely distilled condition in which my oppo-
nents demand that I exhibit one. (The poor creature
would long ago have evaporated and would now be
waiting for us in its nowhere paradise.) But I do
know many people whom I may, in good conscience,
call utopians in the given situations I mentioned in
the article, and other, similar situations: those who
would give up, or make concessions on Berlin and
Formosa, who stress for unilateral nuclear disarma-
ment (Linus Pauling and Bertrand Russell among
them), who believe that with every new African

7

nation a new and authentic voice is added to the
Western chorus of democracy, who, casting tradition
and philosophy out of their minds and spurred by
no other mental image than that of the “nuclear
holocaust,” suggest that we reconsider the very con-
cepts of good and evil.

Why do I call these people “utopian”? First, be-
cause they do not understand the nature of the
enemy who considers every concession—and even the
discussion of concession—as a crack in the Western
armor, a possible point which, skillfully exploited,
may divide the Western allies. That many believe in
just such concessions is demonstrated by Senator
Mansfield’s utopian suggestion that we renounce free
elections as a means of reuniting Germany and help
place Greater Berlin under the policing force of a
mixed East-West German militia. Perhaps the Sen-
ator has never heard of the fate of the post-war coali-
tion governments in Poland, Hungary and Czecho-
slovakia. They too began by being “mixed.”

I call these people “utopian,” in the second place,
because they do not understand the nature of power,
and think of it as an anomaly in the twentieth cen-
tury. This is implicit in their philosophy, too: in their
monistic system the concept of force must be angel-
ized (otherwise morality would have no place in it)
or expelled.

I call these people “utopian,” in the third place, be-
cause they have a strange preference for discharging
insoluble problems into the lap of world organiza-
tions, refusing to understand that these organizations
are only instruments of diplomacy and power-politics,
not embodiments of mankind’s collective happiness,
present or future. As instruments, they can be used

and maneuvered by ideological or power-groups; but. ..
since this is usually done with exalting slogans, the —
utopian is unable to resist the mirage these slogans
promise him.

What is the alternative to utopianism? Mr. Reissig
would like to put a word in my mouth, but I refuse
to swallow it; he says I want our statesmen to meet
“all hard facts with hard steel.” I never said that;
what I do say is that they should meet hard facts (for
example, the Communist will to expand) with hard
facts (our unyielding firmness).

Hard facts, in my vocabulary, may of course mani-
fest themselves as a need for programs of economic
aid, etc., but also as a clear decision to use whatever
weapons we have. Otherwise we may have to adopt
that great logician Bertrand Russell’s choice. Lord
Russell derisively asks if the “realists” have consid-
ered that war would expose the neutral nations to
“nuclear holocaust.” I should like to ask Lord Rus-

sell if he has considered that through unilateral dis-

armament we would expose them, and ourselves, to
a Soviet concentration-camp regime.

With Mr. Shannon I have, I am pleased to see, no
important disagreement. He and I may think differ-
ently about the State Department’s stand on the off-
shore islands now, but we agree that it was wise not
to evacuate them last fall. The same applies to Al-
geria, except that in my opinion a Communist en-
circlement of Europe's “soft underbelly” (which is at
least a possibility with an independent Maghreb
blocking French presence in the rest of Africa too)
is one of the fatal blows that can strike the Western
world.

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gther voices

KARL BARTH AND THE EAST

The recently published pamphlet in which the dis-
tinguished Protestant theologian Karl Barth seems to
urge Christian “acceptance” of the Eastern Commu-
nist regimes has provoked international comment.
The following is a substantial excerpt from an edi-
torial which appeared in the February 4 Christian

Century.

Karl Barth is currently the center of a storm over a
45-page pamphlet published in November by a Basle
publishing house over his name. Entitled “Letter to a
Pastor in the German Democratic Republic,” the
pamphlet is interpreted to be an appeal to East
German Protestants to desist from their resistance to
Communist policies while not urging active support
of Communist leaders.

We have not yet seen a copy of the Barth pam-
phlet, so lack the basis for a first-hand judgment. Re-
ligious News Service quotes Dr. Barth as describing
oppression and persecution as “useful scourges” to
purify the church of complacency and self-assurance.
Since East German Christians suffer persecution at
the hands of the Communists, presumably this com-
ment is intended to influence their attitude toward
their persecutors. Dr. Barth said that adversity and
suffering are “God’s tools.” He presented what he
called the “American way of life” as a greater danger
than Communism. In reply to a question as to
whether it was right to try to “pray away” the East
German Communist regime, he said that required
accepting before God the responsibility for such a
prayer: “Might you not fear that He might grant your
prayer in the frightful fashion of letting you awake
one morning among the fleshpots of Egypt as a man
bounden to the American way of life?” He also wrote
that the East Germans had nothing worse to fear
than “liberation in accordance with the ideas of
[Chancellor Konrad] Adenauer.” While he de-
nounced life in the West, the theologian did not ex-
press any admiration for life under the Communists.

As a matter of fact, such an expression was super-
fluous if the general trend of his remarks was what
the above quotations suggest it was. He was saying,
if the above is a true indication, to the hard-beset
pastors in the East Zone: Submit. Endure. Do not
resist, actively or passively, the Communist regime. It

is the will of God that it rule over you. He also
seemed to say: Do resist the West.

Dr. Barth’s tolerance toward the evils he finds in
the East is not matched by a similar attitude toward
evils he finds in the West. “The message of Christ is
as repulsive and painful to the West as to the East,”
he wrote. “Who knows, perhaps it is more painful
and repulsive to the West than to the East.” He
recognized that the East is dominated by “open to-
talitarianism” but said the West is infected by “creep-
ing totalitarianism” and implied he thought the latter
was the more insidious evil.

While it is permissible to hope that the full text of
Dr. Barth’s statement may soften the harshness of
some parts of this judgment, it is quite likely that its
main burden will not be lightened. He has spoken in
this vein before, as he indicated in his pamphlet.
“These have always been my opinions.” Concerning
them several observations might be made.

First, it is our duty to acknowledge that “the
American way of life” has its serious limitations. We
constantly confess its sins, so there is no"reason why
we may not agree that it does sin. This way of life
tempts Christians and other men to pride and com-
placency, to conformity to standards which are not
the standards of the gospel, to materialism and other
forms of idolatry.

Second, we need not acknowledge and do not for
a moment admit that the Communist system is less
subject to critical Christian judgment. On this point
we believe Dr. Barth errs, as he has repeatedly done
in the past. Why is this man, who condemned
Naziism, blind to the evil of totalitarianism when it
appears in its Communist form?

Third, we are not ashamed that we have the free-
dom to exercise critical self-judgment and to express
this judgment openly. Instead, we hold this freedom
is the mark of an order which is capable of reform
and so is subject to divine discipline. By Christian
standards this freedom should be the decisive ele-
ment in any comparison that can fairly be made be-
tween the two ways of life. Does freedom mean noth-
ing to Dr. Barth?

Fourth, Communist oppressions and persecutions
may be in God's hands “scourges,” “tools” and puri-
fiers, but this action of divine providence in no way
excuses or justifies oppressors and persecutors .. .

9

books

RELIGION AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

Four Existentialist Theologians
edited by Will Herberg. Double-
day. 312 pp. $1.25.

by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

Not only vision but courage as
well is needed by any man who
would take upon himself the task
of compiling a reader in existen-
tialist theology. Will Herberg, in
giving us his Four Existentialist
Theologians, has thrown a bridge
between the European Continent
and the United States of America;
he has given to the American pub-
lic the fruit of a movement in
theology whose origins are in
Europe but whose future belongs
to the North American continent.
I say this because here, within a
society frankly pluralistic in struc-
ture, will be debated the future of
any Protestant-Catholic-Jewish di-
alectic in the theological order.

That this dialectic has limped
badly in the past cannot be laid
only to the reluctance of Protes-
tants and Catholics to talk to one
another; it can be laid as well to
something far more profound: the
principled refusal of Protestant-
ism to engage the Catholic world
in a conversation carried out in
the terms and language of scho-
lasticism. The spectacular rise of
existential analysis has thrown in-
to the hands of both great reli-
gious bodies an intellectual in-
strument, a methodology, that
both can use, not only for their
own proper ends, but also to fur-
ther an understanding and com-
prehension without which reli-
gious peace must remain a pious
dream.

Herberg’s vision, as indicated,
is strengthened by courage. Not
everyone will be satisfied with the
selections he has made nor even
with the men he has chosen to

Mr. Wilhelmsen, a member of the
philosophy department at the
University of Santa Clara, has
recently spent a year in Spain as
a Guggenheim Fellow.

10

represent existentialist theology.
My own reservations are them-
selves a compliment to the ed-
itor’s courage. While Nicolas Ber-
dyaev, Martin Buber, and Paul
Tillich are certainly representa-
tive of Orthodox, Jewish, and
Protestant theological existen-
tialism, it is difficult to under-
stand why Mr. Herberg chose
Jacques Maritain as representa-
tive of Roman Catholic existen-
tialist thought.

If existentialist thought is char-
acterized by a preoccupation with
anguish, death, communion, tra-
gedy, nostalgia, loyalty, fidelity, it
is difficult to see how Maritain
can be considered representative
of Catholic existentialism. While
these elements function within
the vast scope of his achievement,
they can hardly be called cen-
tral to his thought. On this score,
I would have preferred Ga-
briel Marcel, And if existentialist
thought is marked by a talent for,
and an insistence on, philosophiz-
ing and theologizing within the
concrete rather than from the con-
crete, I believe that Romano Guar-
dini would have been a happier
choice.

Be that as it may, Herberg per-
haps proves his point by including
Maritain’s famous meditation on
subjectivity and alienation. Never
knowing any subject, any person,
precisely as such, precisely as in-
teriority, the human person is
doomed to fall short of his built-in
drive for a communication and a
love that breaks down every bar-
rier and that swarms through to
the very center of the beloved.
Only in God where I am known
even as I am can I find that com-
munion with all history and all
mankind that I desperately need.

Maritain’s eloquent pages on
subjectivity echo, without repeat-
ing, Martin Buber’s life-long con-
cern with the “I-Thou” relation-
ship. Convinced that I become an
“T” only when I utter the name of
a “Thou,” Buber’s Jewish person-

alism itself echoes the existential-
ist insistence that man exists only
within a world and that he cannot
be understood apart from the
world which is his. For Buber
this implies a dependence of my
very knowledge of external reality
on my communion with a world
of persons. Jewish personalism in
its perennial opposition to the
Greek emphasis on Nature and
the Greek tendency to reduce
man to Nature is the traditional
bone-work underlying the nery-
ous delicacy of I and Thou.

If union in love dominates the
thought of Martin Buber, dis-
union and sin can be said to lie
at the center of the mind of
Nicolas Berdyaev. When we set
aside the many prophetic inani-
ties that plague the corpus of
Berdyaev’s work, there remains a
solid center of doctrine worth the
meditation of any man who has
ever been stirred to think on the
mystery of sin. For Berdyaev, sin
is “objectification,” “thingifica-
tion.” When I cast a person forth
from my heart and look upon
him as if he were a reality distant
from my being and foreign to my
life, I have sinned against that
man; I have sinned by expelling
him from my life.

For me, the most exciting sec-
tion of Four Existentialist Theo-
logians is that devoted to Paul
Tillich. Here we have a man who
has brought to the service of
Protestantism the very latest dis-
coveries in existential analysis.
And he has done this, as he says
in his introduction to his sermons,
as a Christian apologist. Here
we have the best in modernity
wedded to the finest in tradition;
we have science exercised in the
name of humility.

A review is no place to explore
the ontology of Tillich, but let it
be said that this ontology is rooted
in the human situation, in man
as he courageously faces the hide-
ousness of death and the ghastly
possibility of annihilation. There

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isa meaning, says Tillich, even to

the meaninglessness of life as
lived in torture by those who
know not the True God and who
know that they know Him not.
“The courage to be is rooted in
the God who appears when God
has disappeared in the anxiety of
doubt.”

The Protestant and Politics by
William Lee Miller. Westminster.
92 pp. $1.00.

by Bernard Murchland

“We must dirty our hands,” Al-
bert Camus wrote in his early
days as a rebel. With that state-
ment he summed up his vigorous
plea for social commitment in an
absurd world.

In this slender volume, William
Lee Miller calls for political
awareness with Camusian energy.
He also indicates the absurdity of
the present political scene in
America. And he sees both in the
broader context of Christianity’s
relevance to all political activity.
“Christianity,” he writes, “gives
no precise answer to any of the
dilemmas of life—certainly not the
political ones. But it provides
what’s more important: direc-
tion, understanding, commitment.
There is no ‘Christian’ position—
but there are better and worse
positions, relatively just and rela-
tively unjust acts, and the Chris-
tian should seek what is good
and just.”

Mr. Miller’s preliminary con-
cern is to establish the non-
political character of the Ameri-
can citizen and censure his fellow
Protestants rather severely (and
humorously) for the part they
played in creating it. A curious
combination of idealism and indi-
vidualism, Miller argues, accounts
for its distinctive traits.

Thus the traditional American
Father Murchland, of the Univer-
sity of Notre Dame, contributes
frequently to a number of relig-
lous journals.

When American philosophers
and theologians begin to take
seriously the cross of anxiety and
anguish; when they come to see
that the insane and those men-
aced by insanity often live more
profoundly the human situation
than those whose lives are un-
troubled by doubt and free from

emphasis on private success and
rugged individualism has mili-
tated against public responsibil-
ity; a successful two-party system
has tended to abolish political ex-
tremes; an immensely productive
economy has given the business
man a veto over the politician;
and the recent emergence of tech-
nology has made the scientist the
archpriest of modern society. As a
result: “a nation with a most un-
political tradition has now become
the nation that most urgently
needs political understanding.”

The particular value structure
that is honored in American so-
ciety is the root cause of the po-
litical absurdities that abound
among us. Nor have most attempts
to relate religion to politics done
much other than further muddle
a confused situation.

The confusion runs all the way
from the familiar “politics is dirty”
attitude, found among some reli-
gious groups, through the moral-
izing errors of the conservatives
(with their monstrous judgmental
looseness), on to the crusading,
my-country-right-or-wrong, God-
is-on-our-side zeal of the “pa-
triots.”

Mr. Miller indicts a lengthy
litany of such attitudes. And in
explaining the relationship be-
tween religion and politics he is
careful to avoid the pitfalls of
moral specificity. The Christian
faith is essentially rooted in the
broad reality of God’s transcend-
ence and immanence. It does not
relate itself to concrete situations
in the form of offering clear-cut
answers, ideals or principles.
Rather it offers creative variations
on the key virtues of love and

tragedy; when they see that risk
and failure are fundamental hu-
man categories; when they begin
to face the issues Paul Tillich has
faced—American philosophy and
theology will have come of age.
Will Herberg has forwarded this
future maturity of American in-
tellectual life.

justice. Understood thus, religion
furnishes invaluable insights into
the nature of man and history—
insights without which political
maturity is impossible. Man is in
no sense a simple creature; he is
a complex in whom conflicting
demands (of individuality and so-
ciality, sin and virtue, reason and
the irrational, historial pressures
and present challenges) mysteri-
ously co-exist.

And here we find the chief
merit of Mr. Miller’s book—its
solid argument for Christian real-
ism, which is primarily, and most
sanely, a matter of taking all
points of view into consideration,
including the Ultimate one. It
knows that we are rarely granted
the luxury of an either-or choice
in human, and especially political,
affairs. It accepts limitations and
urges on us the courage to endure
the endless efforts, frustrations
and new beginnings that are
necessary to realize anything hu-
man. This kind of realism in the
political domain stems indisput-
ably from the special awareness
of God the Christian has. The
Christian God is not a Greek idol,
a pagan monolith, an abstract
principle (like Aristotle’s Prime
Mover) from which lesser prin-
ciples are more or less univocally
derived. He is rather the ultimate
challenge in every situation. In a
word, He is Love.

I would like to see William Lee
Miller further develop these prin-
ciples, here briefly adumbrated. It
would be an important contribu-
tion in a time when we all fear
some nameless horror; a time, too,
in which we all suffer deeply from
the lack of real leadership.

11

What We Are For

by Arthur Larson. Harper. 173 pp. $2.95.

“What we are for," in the author's opinion, "is the active,
positive force for change in the world." Yet by appearing only

International Politics in the Atomic Age
by John H. Herz. Columbia. 360 pp. $6.00. 4

How a variety of factors, most notably technological advance and 7
nuclear power, has fundamentally changed the traditional stuc —

to oppose the revolutionary Soviet offensive on all fronts, we
have come to represent in the world's eyes an "ill-defined force
for countering change." To offset this image, Mr. Larson suggests
several ways to re-think our position in the affirmative.

Voices of Dissent

Grove Press. 384 pp. $1.95.

The continuing tradition of articulate American radicalism is
embodied in this challenging anthology of articles from Dissent
magazine. Among the authors who appear are Irving Howe,
Lewis Coser, Norman Thomas, Paul Goodman, Harvey Swados,
Erich Fromm, and C. Wright ‘Mills.

Education and Freedom

by H. G. Rickover. Dutton. 256 pp. $3.50.

To this passionate critique of twentieth century American educa-
tion Admiral Rickover brings the insights of professional knowl-
edge and a sense of urgency gained from a career of public
service. "The future belongs to the best-educated nation," he
writes. "Let it be ours.”

ture of international relations is the subject of this study. The
author recommends and outlines a whole new approach to the
problems of co-existence which, in their turn, demand new com
cepts of sovereignty, security, and defense. 3

Island in the City: the World of Spanish Harlem
by Dan Wakefield. Houghton Mifflin. 278 pp. $4.00.

A distinguished piece of social reporting, this book communicates —
not only the observable grim facts of daily life in Manhattan's —
“El Barrio," but also a true understanding of the personal —
tragedies of its inhabitants. 7

The Tragedy of American Diplomacy
by William Appleman Williams. World. 219 pp. $4.75.

"The tragedy of American action is not that it is evil, but
it denies American ideas and ideals," writes the author,
supports this conclusion by tracing developments in modern
history that reveal a basic misunderstanding of our role in
affairs.

worldview

A JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
volume 2, no. 3 / March 1959

WORLDVIEW is published monthly by The Church Peace Union.
Subscription: $2.00 per year.
Address: 170 East 64th Street, New York 21, N.Y.

EDITORIAL BOARD
William Clancy, Editor
William J. Cook

A. William Loos John R. Inman

s
Editorial Assistant, Arlene Croce

CONTENTS

Editorial Comment
In the Magazines
The Revolution in Cuba
James Finn
Correspondence
Other Voices
BOOKS
Four Existentialist Theologians
by F. Wilhelmsen
Protestants and Politics by Bernard Murchland
Current Reading

Opinions expressed in WORLDVIEW are those of the authors, and
not necessarily of The Church Peace Union.

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New York 21, N. Y.

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