Churches: Politics in the Pulpit

Once upon a time, most churchmen stayed discreetly on the sidelines dur ing a presidential campaign. No more. This year, as never before, religious journals, church groups and individual clergymen are deeply, openly involved in the election. The overwhelming majority are against Barry Goldwater and, though less fervently, for Lyndon Johnson. In marked contrast with 1960, when Protestant ministers soberly debated whether John F. Kennedy’s Roman Catholicism might impair church-state separation — and mostly concluded that it would not — churchmen this year have generated more heat than light.

In large measure, Goldwater himself provoked clerical disapproval. By abandoning a campaign of reasoned conservatism for a confusing variety of unfocused stands and charges, he has left himself wide open to criticism —and churchmen have often responded with a rancor that is undisguisedly political rather than morally persuasive.

Break with Tradition. Sometimes soberly, sometimes shrilly, a number of church journals this year have broken with longstanding traditions of noncommitment. The nondenominational Christian Century, perhaps the most influential of Protestant weeklies (circ. 38,000), has not only come out for Lyndon Johnson, the first presidential candidate it has endorsed since Wendell Willkie; it has also published an anti-Goldwater editorial in almost every issue since the G.O.P. Convention last July, attacking Barry for “stridency and military recklessness,” “obsessive nationalism,” and “promoting racist exploitation.” Christianity and Crisis, a small (12,000) but prestigious journal of Protestant opinion, broke a 25-year record of political neutrality to oppose Goldwater, devoted an entire twelve-page edition to a critical analysis of the G.O.P. candidate’s views. The editorial board, whose chairmen are Reinhold Niebuhr and President John C. Bennett of Union Theological Seminary, found a conflict between Goldwater’s “record and the judgment of the Christian churches on most of the major issues of social ethics in our time.”

Similar objections were voiced by the lay-edited Catholic monthly Ramparts, the Episcopal journals the Witness and the Churchman, and the biweekly United Church Herald — although Dr. Ben Herbster, president of the United Church of Christ, later maintained that the magazine was not speaking for the denomination. Many other church journals seem to have lined up against Goldwater by implication. The Methodist student magazine Motive reprinted the entire Christianity and Crisis special issue dissecting Goldwater, while the Covenant Companion of the Evangelical Covenant Church published a story on the Century’s stand; neither journal added comment or rebuttal. As the American Lutheran obliquely put it, some candidates “will make subtle appeals to man’s innate prejudice—especially prejudice against the Negro. That is an issue no Christian can ignore.” The Texas Methodist compared the parties’ platforms with stands taken at the recent Methodist General Conference, made it clear that on every substantive issue, the Democratic view is closer to the church’s teaching.

Tragic Vote. A number of church groups have recently expressed their views on social issues in terms that they hope will be taken as a repudiation of Goldwater. The Methodist Social Concerns Committee of Detroit argued that “it would be tragic if Christians voted for a candidate who would endeavor to turn us away from our progress in the areas of civil rights laws, foreign aid, social security legislation, the United Nations and control of nuclear weapons.” In a “statement of conscience,” 20 leaders of the American Ethical Union, endorsing a candidate for the first time in its 88-year history, called for the “decisive defeat” of Goldwater. The National Student Christian Federation last month resolved: “We feel that the Johnson-Humphrey position is more consistent with our understanding of responsible action in a world of change.”

Not many clergymen appear to agree with Dean Francis B. Sayre of Washington Cathedral that the candidates offer voters a “sterile choice.”* Most Jewish rabbis are strongly opposed to Goldwater; so, apparently, is a majority of ministers in mainstream Protestant churches. Barry’s strongest clerical backing comes from fundamentalist pastors (mostly in the South and Midwest), many of whom find his political conservatism in accord with their conservative theology. The Senator has received fervent support from such right-wing evangelists as Billy James Hargis and Harvey Springer of Colorado. Springer, an indefatigable anti-Catholic, has admitted, however, that he has qualms about Congressman William Miller as Goldwater’s running mate.

“Jewish Suicide.” Few ministers have openly talked politics from the pulpit. One Detroit clergyman estimates nonetheless that one-third of the city’s United Church of Christ ministers have woven anti-Goldwater references into their sermons. Last week Dr. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, said that a “Jewish vote for Goldwater is a vote for Jewish suicide.” The Rev. Jack Mendelsohn, a leading Boston Unitarian, argued that the need for “rationality and orderliness” in politics justifies “the repudiations by millions of Republicans of the Goldwater candidacy.”

To date, the strongest words from the pulpit — a clear challenge to Goldwater on moral rather than political or personal grounds — have come from the Rev. William Sydnor, 53, rector of the historic Christ Episcopal Church .in Alexandria, Va. The issue, Sydnor said, is not Goldwater’s “conservatism,” but the relationship of his ideas to God’s law as revealed in the Bible.

“I certainly do not think the Democrats or their candidate can wrap themselves in the blanket of moral purity and unmixed motives,” said Sydnor, but added, “When one listens to and reads Senator Goldwater, one finds that respect for God’s law is shockingly absent. Never in the history of our nation have an aspirant for the presidency and his backers espoused principles and practices that so brazenly ignore God’s commands dealing with love, peace, reconciliation, brotherhood, care of the poor, respect for law and the constitutional authority. Our prayer that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven must not be mere lip service.”

* Neither, after reflection and strong criticism, does Episcopalian Sayre. Last week the dean declared that “no one can simply cry ‘A plague on every house,’ and be dormant in his responsibility.”