Politics Is Not a Four-Letter Word

This is a statement made by participants in the Maston Colloquium meeting in Dallas on August 6, 1996. Their names are affixed with their positions provided for identification purposes only. Sponsored by the Center for Christian Ethics, the Colloquium is named for the pioneer Christian ethicist, Dr. T.B. Maston. This particular Colloquium was a seriously intentional day-long conversation among knowledgeable persons from widely divergent backgrounds and disciplines who sought to come to grips with an important ethical issue, bring Christian insights and convictions to bear on it, and propose some specific and practical actions to help our society move forward in some new and better directions.
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Contemplation
By Hal Haralson

I sought God as a child.
"Now I lay me down to sleep."
Simple trust.
I found Him there...
But sought Him more.
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The Neocapitalist Employment Crisis
By Robert N. Bellah

Any serious consideration of the neocapitalist global economy leads to some rather dark thoughts about our present situation that neither Bill Clinton nor Bob Dole show any likelihood of seriously considering. We may remember that through most of human history societies have been divided between a fortunate few, getting almost all of society's tangible rewards and protected by State power, and a more or less miserable many. It is only in the modern age that societies have attempted to include all or almost all their inhabitants in a democratic community. The motives of the elite for this change were not necessarily charitable.

In traditional societies that mass of the population was engaged in low-skilled agricultural tasks; it needed not to be educated or motivated; largely it needed only to be controlled. But two features of modern societies changed all that. The first was the wars which marked the emergence of nation states. As a consequence of new technology these wars could no longer be fought by aristocrats on horseback: they required infantrymen capable of precision maneuvering and of mastering at least simple technology. With the industrial revolution a huge labor force was required to man the new factories. Since societies required the active and skilled participation of the mass of the population in the army and in the factory, such people could no longer be entirely excluded from society's rewards, and so we built the modern welfare state.

The problem today is that, with the new technology, most people are no longer needed:
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Growing Up Across From Sin City 
By Roger Lovett

I grew up in the forties and fifties across the Alabama line in Columbus, Georgia. The Chattahoochee River divided Georgia from Alabama. As a little boy, I would stand on a hill of the Georgia side, look across the river in amazement and say: "Over there's Alabama." The distance between where I lived and Phenix City seemed light years away. In the forties and fifties Phenix City was a wild and woolly place. We called it sin city, very different from the safe, predictable mill village where I lived in North Columbus. On the other end of town was Fort Benning, the world's largest infantry center. So Phenix City was where the "soldier boys" would go for a good time. We were told that Phenix City had it all: gambling, prostitution, drinking until all hours-even dancing which Baptists also feared.
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Integrity - In the Land of Nod? 
By Carlyle Marney

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I prevailed on Carlyle Marney, who was afraid to fly, to drive to a meeting I was responsible for and speak. He did it out of friendship. But he took the assignment seriously. This sermon on "Integrity - In the Land of Nod?" is vintage Carlyle Marney who though "being dead yet speaketh." Hear ye him. (Even though reading this may make you wish for Blaise Pascal.) 
Foy Valentine 

Where would integrity be important to our survival if not in Nod-the land of wandering? Wanderers we are-for something of everything we used for boundaries, or treasured as landmarks, or revered as sacred signs, has gone away. Who needs Integrity more than Nod-dwellers? Or where is less of such a commodity to be found? Where more than in this "terrible twentieth century," this Sargasso sea, this "never-ending winter" of our discontent, has the assay on the ore of integrity run lighter? And our refuge, the Church? 

"Your Church," says my brother, "is not just a wagon turned over, it is a wagon that has struck a land-mine-and-it was carrying some of everything precious we had hoped to gain."
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Updated Monday, November 26, 2001

The Work Ethic: Toward Effective Christian Social Action 
By Franklin H. Littell

On the western slope of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, a recent confrontation raised again the question of the work ethic. A new logging law, typical of those passed in the last few years of total deference to corporate interests, has made available for cutting one of the few last stands of ancient trees. Many stands already have been clear cut since the election of 1980 closed the door on the great environmental tradition set by Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir.

In the confrontation, a logger put the issue squarely. He was representing the public opposition to clear cutting the remnant stand. He had grown up and spent his life working in the old trees, and now he represented the preservation agencies. He wanted selective cutting to preserve enough of the growth to secure the interests of coming generations. He spoke sympathetically of the company loggers, many of them his boyhood friends, in a recent interview:

" A lot of their identity and pride was tied up with working in the woods, and timber's been a part of the Northwest for a long time. That was, in my mind, something that was supposed to go on for generations."

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Book Reviews
by Darold Morgan

• Fire From Heaven by Harvey Cox
• Jihad vs McWorld by Benjamin R. Barber
• The Manufactured Crisis-"Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools" David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle

A Call to Justice: Commencement Address, 1996 
By David Paul Smith

Earlier this year Dr. Rutherford reminded us of a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: "If an honest heart is the first blessing, a knowing head is the second." You might think my talk tonight would be about "a knowing head," since Highland Park, by any standard, is known for its high academic achievement by our students, but it is the "honest heart" that I wish to focus on tonight.

It is said that there are three great questions in life. Pursuit for the answers to these questions commits us to a lifelong endeavor. They are:
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• Both Negative and Positive Functions
• THE TERRIBLE TRIAD
  • Devolution
  • Deregulation
  • Privatization
• Human Rights and Governmental Roles
• Federal Functions
• Conclusion
• Endnotes