Monthly Musing . . .

WHEN THE VICTIMS RISE
Robert Meyers

Our penchant for ignoring the lessons of history makes us forget countless examples of the inexorable law of reaction. It has been shown a thousand times that any greatly repressive regime gives birth to a reaction which outdoes its parent in tyranny and extremism.

A prime example is that 17th century swing from rigidity to license. In the time of Charles I almost every English intellectual had fun mocking the straight‑laced Puritans who named their children out of the Bible and who damned relentlessly anyone who ate sweets on a holy day.

But by and by, when the victims of this mockery came to power themselves, they did precisely what we should have expected them to do. They retaliated by closing the playhouses, beating the actors, censoring writings, changing the college curriculums, and requiring candidates for honors or jobs to tell exactly how and when they had experienced the requisite "new birth."

Like the extremism which provoked their violent reaction, theirs bred its own defeat and provoked another one. Charles II returned from France with his riotous court and men who had been compelled to live austere lives threw off their manacles with a wild glee.

Now, everything the Puritan had preached as sacred was insulted daily. His piously arranged features were mocked, and with faces of brazen impudence his risen enemy flaunted deeds which were certain to horrify him. Because the Puritan had been inhumanly severe on illicit love, the vengeful liberated made a joke of purity and marital fidelity. Because the Puritan had seldom opened his mouth in public without quoting Scripture, the rebels seldom opened theirs without speaking bawdy.

One need not go to the 17th century, of course, for illustrations of the principle. Our Catholic friends have found in recent years how galled were many of their priests under the authoritarian tyranny of their church. When Pope John opened the window many of them promptly gulped the sweet fresh air of unfamiliar freedom and then insisted upon discussing openly a whole houseful of irritants.

When I remember these things I cannot help wondering how long the Churches of Christ will submit to a tyranny of preachers and journal editors who tell them which men are sound and which are not, which interpretations they may hold and which they must discard. As I continue to hear stories of faculty members harried or fired because of the pressures of an insecure orthodoxy, and of preachers dismissed from their pulpits at the insistence of other preachers who decided they were unsound, I wonder if we may not be sowing the seeds of a reaction which will one day dismay us with its emotional excess.