Introduction

Dr. Paul Tudor Jones

01/04/62

Perhaps you have noticed in recent issues of most of our national magazines an advertisement that reads something like this:

 “In 1949, the Communists took China, in 1951, Tibet, 1954, North Vietnam, 1961, Cuba.

“This minute they threaten West Berlin, Laos, parts of Africa, and Latin America.

“Nikita Khrushchev means to bury the United States. His timetable for world conquest is on schedule. Can the communists be stopped before they bury us? What can a private citizen do?”

And then the advertisement ends by suggesting that the private citizen can help to defeat communism by making a cash donation for the support of Radio Free Europe. Five million people behind the iron curtain in central Europe have already defected and the messages of Radio Free Europe keep hope alive in the hearts of those yet behind the iron curtain, fanning the flames of courage in some other hearts to dash for freedom or fight against tyranny.

But most Americans feel there is more they should do — that the crisis of the hour demands that they must do much more to oppose militant communism — but what?

Some loyal Americans think that the thing they must do is to take part in rallies and mass meetings to inform and excite other Americans to wake up and defend the United States against the Communist menace. “Survival U. S. A.,” a public movement with such an aim, was born in Memphis.

Other disturbed Americans are turning their energies to the dissemination of information they feel pertinent through various media: motion pictures, like “Communism on the Map,” magazine and newspaper articles, personal letters, such as Captain Eddie Rickenbacker’s Christmas letter to his friends in which he stated: “We are already at war to preserve these liberties . . . We tell ourselves that another war is unthinkable, while our enemy goes right on waging war, expanding its territory, stealing our secrets, undermining our defense, and washing our brains in its propaganda.”

               Other concerned, loyal Americans are organizing study groups, like the John Birch Society, where they read the source materials on communism and inform themselves on the impact communist thought and action is making all round the world.

Some of the most exercised of our American patriots are moving to meet the Communist challenge on the home front by joining in the mass movement to hunt out the subversives and brand them. I should like to read you this editorial from the New York Times about this sort of anti-Communist labor. As you can see, the Times editor does not think so highly of this particular sort of fight against communism on the home front:

“The John Birch Society — headquarters, Belmont, Massachusetts — is now endeavoring to build up ‘The most complete and most accurate files in America on the leading Comsymps, Socialists, and liberals.’ According to its latest bulletin, the society wants from its estimated 60,000 members scattered through the country, ‘the background, connections, and activities of all the leading liberals.’

“What kind of nonsense is this? Like Ko-Ko in ‘The Mikado’, the Birchers have ‘got a little list’ — or at least they’re trying to get one — and with just about as much reason. A list of ‘liberals’? A list of people who are for public housing, like the late Robert A. Taft? A list of people who are for foreign aid, like Dwight D. Eisenhower? A list of people who are against segregation, like the Chief Justice of the United States? A list of people who are for support of the United Nations, like Richard M. Nixon?

“The whole idea of a private group in a democratic, open society such as ours drawing up a ‘little list’ — is — or ought to be — abhorrent. The ‘little list’ will inevitably turn into a little blacklist, a true symptom of the totalitarian mindlessness that judges individuals by their class, what they say, or what they do. Let the Birchers have their little list; it — and they — should be taken as seriously as Ko-Ko.”

Other patriots are moving against Communism by withholding contributions from any activity that might possibly assist communism in its march to world supremacy. The D. A. R. national defense committee warned its membership shortly before Christmas against buying Christmas cards from the United Nations Children Fund because some of the monies raised in this venture were to be used for relief among starving children in countries, either openly communist or collaborationist. This action brought forth a blast from Inez Robb, herself a D. A. R., but who averred: “In a world in which cold, hunger, and ill health make millions a prey for communism, the Daughters would cure the situation by making those millions, particularly the kids — colder, hungrier, and more miserable than ever.”

And what should be the role of the Christian Church and Christian churchmen in this communist crisis? Again, the most noticeable feature in the contemporary scene is the confusion and disagreement among church people over this very issue.

A member of this congregation, sincerely concerned about the communist menace, after attending a public rally on communism and going to hear a former communist agent speak in a Roman Catholic church, remarked: “I hate to admit it, but the Catholics are far ahead of us in their study of communism versus the church. It is time we waked up! I do not advocate panic, only education.”

Another member of our church spoke to me about the puzzling action of the World Council of Churches recently in New Delhi when the Russian Orthodox Church was admitted as a member. What does this mean? That the W. C. C. is playing footsey with the commies? Some sincere Christians think we Presbyterians should pull out of the World Council because of this. They ask have we forgotten the Action of the Orthodox Church in 1948, when the great Uniat Church in Rumania was swallowed up by the Orthodox Church. Almost unnoticed by the outside world, this large and ancient Christian Church of over one million members was liquidated by decree of the Rumanian Communist government. Four hundred thirty pastors of the Uniat Church were suddenly arrested by communist police, brutally beaten, and with their families looking on, whisked away to prison with bloody faces. To these arrested pastors in prison, the police presented printed leaflets demanding that the leaflet be signed at once. The statement was a declaration signifying a desire to leave the Uniat Church and join the Rumanian Easter Orthodox Church — which church was, by the way, brought under the complete control of communist powers with the communist imposed Patriarch Justinian at its head. From the prison the police emerged with 430 signatures. How they were obtained is a secret. Perhaps by the persuasion of pistols pointed at heads, or by forgery. But on the basis of these signatures, the communist government liquidated the Uniat Church. When the arrested pastors were released, all but seven of the 430 denied that signatures had validity.

Yet, the Russian Orthodox Church, which includes the Rumanian Orthodox Church, has been admitted to the World Council. In justifying this action, Mr. Charles C. Parlin, an American Methodist, said: “The World Council of Churches is a religious body, and applications for membership are judged on the basis of religious belief — the acceptance of Jesus Christ as God and Savior. Relationships of a particular church to its government and the government’s political or economic theories are not determinative. Member churches, in fact, have their headquarters in lands representing the widest range of political and economic forms. Member churches, in their relationship to their respective governments, also vary widely — for example, in the United States there is no relationship, whereas in Great Britain and in Sweden there is a close relationship in the case of their established churches. In the Russian church during recent years, no one of its churchmen has questioned the form of his government’s political structure or the economic theory which it has adopted. But on the issue of whether Russia is to be an atheist or a Christian nation, there is a head-on collision between church and state. On this issue, no Russian churchman has given any indication that he was prepared to give or to compromise.” And a Presbyterian clergyman, Eugene Carson Blake, says: “The communist party is atheistic and, of course, dominates the Russian state. But the very name given to the faithful in the Russian church is ‘God Believers.’ The churches’ very existence is a challenge to the communist ideology.”

What should be the role of the Christian in such a world crisis? Before we can answer this, we must plow, rather carefully and thoroughly, some wide areas. We must come to some sort of intelligent decision about several other questions. Such as:

1. What is the nature of Communism? Is it wholly bad or partly good? If evil, in what does its evil, from the Christian point of view, consist?
2. What is the Biblical teaching about the Christian’s relation to any political state — be it good or evil?
3. What is the scriptural teaching about the Christian’s relation to other Christians of varying political persuasions and racial and national distinctions?

A study of the gospels reveals that Jesus, during his ministry, had to wage a constant battle on two fronts: against the extremists of the right political wing, and of the left political wing, between the Sadducean collaborationists and the Zealot revolutionaries.

The Roman Empire, as we all know, ruled the tiny Palestinian province in Jesus’ time. The Zealots were a passionate, Palestinian patriotic group of Jews who preached a doctrine of open rebellion and of throwing off the Roman tyranny in order that an independent Jewish state might again exist.

The Sadducees were the political party who advocated making peace with the Roman Lords and putting up with their tyranny. The reason the Sadducees feared and, at last, so fiercely opposed Jesus, was that they believed He would fan to fever heat the revolutionary desires of the oppressed Jews. The Sadducean power to rule in Judea, held by leave of Rome, would be upset if Jesus brought on a Zealot uprising.

Even within the circle of Jesus’ disciples, these two opposing parties — Zealots and Sadducees — were presented. Simon, the Zealot, was openly a member of the revolutionary party, and there is much evidence that Judas, James and John, and perhaps Peter, belonged to the Zealots or had Zealot sympathies.

On the other hand, Matthew, the tax collector, was a collaborationist with the Roman government.

So Jesus had to deal effectively with these two groups and keep the peace within the circle of His closest associates.

Does this mean that Jesus’ words: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto the God the things that are God’s,” is an admonition to both sides of the political camp that His affairs are in a realm outside their political differences — that religion must be kept out of politics and politics out of religion? That He has no word for them in the terrible exigencies of political decision and action?

No, but rather, as Oscar Cullmann points out in his book, The State in the New Testament, Jesus is saying: “The state is nothing final. But it may levy taxes. People should pay these even if it is to the heathen Roman State which has no proper right to the possession of Palestine . . . But remember, the State is nothing final. It has the right to demand what is necessary to its existence, but nothing more. Every totalitarian claim of the state is thereby disavowed. In the background we hear the challenge: ‘If ever the state demands what belongs to God, if ever it hinders you in the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, then resist it.’” (p. 36-37)

We shall therefore in this series of Thursday night lessons, search the scriptures for the relevant passages for Christians confronted by the pressures of communism, and there are many such relevant passages, that we may be intelligently informed by the mind of our Lord on these issues, and so be prepared for courageous obedience.

Our next session will deal with “The Nature of Communism — Good or Bad? — and if bad, wherein does the essence of its evil consist?”