Religion: The Foolishness of Preachers

The “starry-eyed” missionaries (who did not make the diplomats’ mistake of wanting to appease Japan) should have a bigger hand in settling the “right peace” for Asia. So pleads Chaplain Russell Cartwright Stroup, veteran of the Philippines, in the current Christian Herald.

What U.S. missionaries know about the Far East, Chaplain Stroup complains, is not being made use of by the U.S.: “The truth is that [the] silk-hatted ‘realists’ have made a mess of things. . . . Our State Department ‘experts’ on Far Eastern Affairs have no better grasp of the problems of the Orient than have many of our outstanding missionaries. … It was the missionary . . . who for years urged aid to the desperately struggling Chinese. . . .” What’s more, “the loss of many American lives and long months of battle might have been avoided if the ‘wisdom’ of diplomats had given way to the ‘foolishness’ of preachers.”