IN REPLY TO DR. BALES
NORMAN I. PARKS

If Dr. Bales had actually set himself to the task of reviewing my essay, he would have had to cut a new record. Instead, he has chosen to replay one of his tired, old ideological discs about “socialism and free enterprise” toward which it is hard to be charitable, and which at best touches only tangentially the theme of “Thy Ecclesia Come.”

Nevertheless, his article underscores the point that Church of Christ leadership, among whom he self-consciously places himself to the forefront with his repetitious “we,” identifies Christianity with a particular bourgeois ideology—an ideology which is the “Protestant ethic” gone to seed. This identification is not only a gross error, but also a threat to the very survival of the ecumenical movement initiated by Campbell and Stone. Any movement that becomes culture-bound never survives when that culture undergoes fundamental reordering. The Way blazed by Jesus Christ belongs to no ism, no class, no culture. It is neither capitalistic, nor socialistic, nor communistic in the sense that it prescribes any form of economic or political organization.

I must reject the assumption that in my essay I cobbled the shoe to fit my reviewer’s foot, however snug it fits. Nor did I categorize him as “neanderthal,” but when he describes Walter Lippmann, one of the nation’s most distinguished conservatives, as a “liberal,” he cuts his own niche. There is only one indirect reference to his institution, which notes the inconsistency of grasping federal largess with one hand while handing out denunciations of “dictatorial federalism” with the other. No mention of the NEP appears, however much it is a source of embarrassment to a “Church of Christer” in most educational circles. Indeed, I am impressed by the negative influence it has with many of its own students. My concern is much broader the penetration of the “business ethic” into organized religion, wherein the church must be a “going concern,” the elders are a self-perpetuating board of directors, the “minister” is president and general manager and submits his policies to the board (and resigns or gets fired over policy disagreements), and the passive stockholders vote by perpetual proxy.

Let it be made clear that criticism of religion that draws vitality from the carcass of Social Darwinism does not require defense of socialism or any other one form of economic organization. I do note that the founder of Christianity was a poor man. His good news was for the poor, the imprisoned, the bruised. Riches seemed to him a hazard. A Biblical free enterpriser who built bigger barns to house bigger economic pies met a sad end. The so-called Reformation Movement in America was led by political and economic radicals. John T. Johnson and David Purviance fought for stay laws, debtor relief, inflationary money, and other forms of governmental intervention. Alexander Campbell in the Virginia Convention thundered against the “money aristocracy,” “any incorporation for religious purpose,” and the dangers in an alliance of wealth and religion.

The review before me stands in strange contrast to this record. I may not be very acute, but it sounds much like the line propagated by Hunt’s “Lifeline,” the Hargis “Christian Crusade,” and “Manion’s Forum.” It does not seem to touch reality. Its “free enterprise system” bears as little relevance to the massive corporate structure of our economy pictured in Galbraith’s Industrial State as it does to the fundamentals of Christianity. “Collectivism” appears to be an ugly word in its lexicon. The TVA is “bad” because it is a public collective. But strangely, Arkansas Power and Light, whose late president, Ham Moses, was a NEP folk hero, is “good”even when it keeps two sets of books, one for the record and the other to bilk the public. Can any Christian criteria for judging the goodness or badness of either private or public collectives be formulated other than honesty and service? By any rational criteria of performance who can believe that Dave Lilienthal would come Out second to Ham Moses?

Most American business thrives to day in the form of vast private collectives characterized by hierarchy, bureaucracy, planning, and geographic spread. Organizationally and behaviorally they are so like governmental agencies they can be called private governments. AT&T, with its $36 billion in capital, exceeds the combined wealth of a score of states. Big business begets big government from the necessity to protect the people against abuses of private power. The proclaimed goal of “an economy free of Government control” is an empty slogan, for the business game without a referee would be unthinkable, even to its players.

While both of us believe that limited, constitutional government offers the best possible environment for freedom and progress, it appears that we define constitutionalism and limits in different ways. Our constitution is a living force, constantly restated and reinterpreted, as Justice Holmes observed, “in the light of our whole experience.” Our Supreme Court has performed this function on the whole with wisdom and foresight. Denunciations of “judicial fiat” will not alter its fundamental role. This is why social security is constitutional and segregation is now unconstitutional. As to limits, I would prohibit the federal government from lending or giving tax money to Harding College because it violates the principle of separation of institutionalized religion and the state. I marvel at the inability of the recipients to detect no wrong in taxing the American people to support a church-related school that denounces the evil of outstretched hands to “Washington.” On the other hand, the case is strong that taxes belong to Caesar and ought to be paid, but Dr. Bales’ institution had to be dragged into court because it refused to pay taxes on its business enterprises.

The disquisition on the comparative merits of “socialism” and “free enterprise” reflects the absurdities of doctrinaire ideology. We have public highways, public hospitals, and public schools. To the professional “free enterpriser” these are enervating and corrupting “socialistic” ventures. To a pragmatic society they are sensible and practical solutions to the problems of education, transportation, and health which could not be effectively met otherwise. For the problems of old age insecurity, growing out of profound changes in the structure of the family and sources of livelihood, we developed compulsory old age and survivors insurance. The American people do not support OASI out of any ideological reasoning, but from an instrumentalist approach. It is good that our society is not ideological. It is safe to predict, therefore, that in terms of means we will continue to do through politics what we may do better collectively and we will continue to have more of both public enterprise and private enterprise. Such is the richness and variety of American society.

If public enterprise, as the author alleges, puts emphasis on the responsibility of society, it does no more than Christianity does. The beatitudes are stated in the plural”ye are the light of the world.” The great New Testament letters were written to whole assemblies. What person can seriously believe the crisis in our ghettos can be met by anything short of massive federal, state, private, and community efforts? Must an increase in collective effort require a decrease in individual responsibility? Why is it that Social Security has been such an enormous boon to the private insurance industry?

I question if any thoughtful conservative would make such a blanket statement as “socialism encourages covetousness,” whereas free enterprise “states that you should go to work and increase the economic pie.” I am unaware that public school teachers are any more covetous than private businessmen. If so, it has not paid off. Nor am I aware that any producer is primarily concerned with enlarging the economic pie but rather the size of his profits. General Motors doesn’t hesitate to cut back production when the pie threatens to get too big for the current market price. Since Adam Smith, capitalism has stressed the theme of selfishness”every man for himself.” Christ’s dictum that “it is happier to give than to get” hardly squares with an economic theory emphasizing hedonism, materialism, competition, rivalry, getting. Fortunately capitalism has not lived up to its core theory, and it has been pressed, cajoled, and socialized to serve our society well. But not too well, I would remind my reviewer; for it was not his bete noir, “socialism”, that produced the slums, crowded the jobless into ghettos, created the frustrations of the riot-torn cities, or decreed the helplessness of the rural castoffs from the Arkansas plantations. The rat-infested apartments of Harlem are free-enterprise ventures and the excessive rents are set by my friend’s golden rule, the “profit motive.”

It is regrettable that this discussion should be diverted toward the strident, pseudo religious, and inflammatory cries of the NEP, whose compelling motive may be to keep corporate dollars flowing Searcy-ward. Apparently language like “dupes, Peaceniks, and Communist allies” do keep the purse strings loose. For courses in public opinion and propaganda, its film, “Communism on the Map,” is a classic example of such techniques as special pleading, exaggeration, distortion, and glittering generality. Its new film, “Revolution Underway,” plugging the theme that Watts, Detroit, and Newark riots were the Communist conspiracy at work, will hardly contribute to the hard, grubby task of carrying social justice and democratic values to millions of deprived negroes. What consistency lies in a program that sings of freedom and individualism while casting aspersions on the civil liberties guarantees handed down by the Supreme Court, or denouncing any kind of a modus viviendi between the U. S. and the U. S. S. R. when the alternative is atomic holocaust? The gap between NEP myth and reality is illustrated by its line that there is a monolithic world communism directed by the “Soviet bosses” when Russia and China are at each other’s throats and Castro pronounces a plague on both their houses.

President Eisenhower’s solemn warning against the dominance of America by the “industrial-military complex” apparently touched no responsive chord among our hardliners, but they continue to bat around the hoary hoax that our society is threatened by “the other twin . . . Socialism.” The poor, old, broken-down Socialist party makes this claim as laughable as the pretension that Karl Marx was the intellectual godfather of Norman Thomas. The fact is that our Western world has, in the words of Daniel Bell, moved “beyond ideology.” This holds no bright hopes for the voices of doctrinaires of all persuasions.

The review’s comments on labor reveal the white-collar predominance in the Church of Christ constituency. I have never heard a sermon commemorating Labor Day or defending labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively. No person on any Church of Christ college campus has ever heard a panel on how to organize a union, or how an organizer can deal with the hostile power structure in a Southern town. Indeed, as is admitted, the place of organized labor in our order is “seldom mentioned.” (Mentioned enough, though, to propose limiting the size of unions to single plants, thus atomizing organized labor.)

Also, there are always dark hints that a great mass of people are ready and willing to loaf and live off the other fellow, and joblessness and unemployment are at their roots individual failures. It is small wonder that the church has attracted few from the blue-collar class and the urban deprived.

Concerning the remarks about Paul’s “dialogue” in a synagogue, I cannot refrain from noting how impossible just access, much less dialogue, is for men like Carl Ketcherside in our college-sponsored church councils and mainline pulpits. Hundreds of their college students read Mission Messenger eagerly and bootleg it from room to room, finding reason and hope in its message, but dialogue remains as distant from their church experience as Saturn in its orbit. There is, I think, a marked similarity in behavior between authoritarian Communism, which is rightly deplored, and the authoritarian religious party which is defended. When a Christian college teacher fails to follow the official party line, he is expelled and branded a religious Trotskyite. I recall a Bales-written pamphlet exposing the “errors” of one such victim. The latter, it seems, got into the “synagogue,” and the “riot” followed.

Such authoritarian tactics will not prevail. No matter how rigid the enforcement of orthodoxy or how alert the guard, the forces of change are at work in the younger generation. My reviewer would probably be taken back by the responses which I have had to Voices from some who have sat in his own classes. The erosion of some of the most treasured orthodoxy is already well advanced, as he can find out by any reasonably well designed questionnaire. I would like to see these forces of change operating constructively. To tie religion to a crude economic ideology which cannot stand rational analysis is to invite distrust of both.

I wish that Dr. Bales had dealt with the burden of my analysis in Voices (p. 73) and my plea for a fellowship of reconciliation (p. 85). Had he done so, I think, there would have resulted that rare phenomenon called “dialogue” which is the first step toward restoration and renewal. Once the dam of authoritarian control is breached, the lay reservoir of good will, common sense, and tolerant outreach will bring this about. The breach, I believe, will come.

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Norman L. Parks is professor of political science and head of the department of social science at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. He was for eight years dean at David Lipscomb College and was on the faculty of two other Church of Christ colleges.