Law and Life

Theology and the State

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 20 of 39

Track: 131

Dictation Name: RR156K20

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Our Scripture this morning is Deuteronomy 4, verses 5 through 10, and 6, verses 4 through 7, and our subject: Theology and the State, Theology and the state. First of all, Deuteronomy 4, verses 5 through 10. “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.

Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons; specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.”

And Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 7. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”

Religion in pagan antiquity was a department of state. Its function was to provide social cement; to bind the people together, and the word religion conveys that very meaning, of a binding together. So that there would be a rational for the law order and stability in the society. Moreover, insurance for the individual was to be provided by that religion. The state was seen as the supreme and primary organization of life. The essence of religion was man’s relationship to the state or to its ruler. The gods were held to act through the state, and in essence to be either incarnate in the rulers or in the state apparatus. Now, Biblical religion was a total denial of this fact. And the result was, as we have seen on other occasions, an inescapable conflict between Christ and Caesar. Every attempt was made to eliminate this alien religion which was destroying the unity of the state. Destroying the state as the one and only institution of which everything else was a branch. As a result, when finally the state realized it could not eliminate Christianity, it sought to capture Christianity, and there ensued a long struggle that lasted through the centuries, on the part of the state, first the Roman Empire, then the Holy Roman Empire, then the various national states, to make the church simply a department of the state. Christianity now, rather than pagan religions, being that religion whose function it was to supply social cement.

On the other hand, too often the church captured the old pagan idea and felt that every aspect of life was to be a department of the church. And the pope sought to make the Holy Roman Empire and the national state branches of the church, under the authority of the pope. However, with the Reformation, no great change unfortunately ensued. Theologically, as far as the doctrine of the church and the doctrine of soteriology; the doctrine of salvation, was concerned, the change was very great. The doctrines were again made biblical, but with regard to a theology of state, there was no correction of the ancient evil. As a matter of fact, the old evils were perpetuated. John Milton very rightly observed “new presbyter is but old priest writ large”, and he was accurate. Because what ensued was, in varying versions, simply the old dream. Rome continued its policy of feeling that the church should be the one overarching institution comprehending within its jurisdiction, state and all other institutions. In Britain, for example, the king of England made himself the head of the church, under Henry the 8th, and the idea was that everyone in England was a member of the church and a citizen of the state. And church and state simply represented England ecclesiastical, and England civil. Now this was the same theory in Geneva. In Geneva there were disputes over the relative powers of church and state, but very definitely the theory in Geneva was the same old Roman theory. The question was, who should predominate, the state or the church? The same idea was put into effect with the Lutheran states with the state very clearly predominating.

Thus, whatever the theologies or the ecclesiology’s, the old pattern by and large was perpetuated with Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and for a considerable length of time, the Congregationalists also. The church had to be everybody, the nation ecclesiastical or the empire ecclesiastical, and they had to be disciplined. This meant that anyone who disagreed or anyone who showed a lack of faith could be prosecuted by the church courts and then by the civil courts. And as a result, that which marked the Middle Ages marked also the Reformation era. There was no change in this attitude. It was assumed that all people had to be within the church. And this is why the Reformed churches have very serious problems. This is why the Reformed party, wherever it existed, operated on the basis that it had to capture the entire nation and compel everyone to be Reformed or Presbyterian or Lutheran or Congregational, or whatever their theology or ecclesiology rather, happened to be. The idea that the church might only be a small remnant of the people in Rome or Wittenberg or London or Geneva, and that the greater bulk were unregenerated, was rejected. The church as a remnant was alien to the thinking of all of these groups. Only the Baptists adopted that idea. I do not mean the Anabaptists, because their idea was also in line with the old Roman tradition at first. The Baptist group, in England, were the first to formulate this idea. They held that the state should be neutral, or just vaguely Christian, that the church should be the believing remnant, entering only on profession of faith; liberty of conscience then should prevail.

Now this was not a new idea. We can find this idea going back to the early church fathers in the days of persecution. For example, we read in Tertullian, and I quote, “We are worshippers of one God, of whose existence and character Nature teaches all men; at whose lightnings and thunders you tremble, whose benefits minister to your happiness. You think that others, too, are gods, whom we know to be devils. However, it is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion—to which free-will and not force should lead us—the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing mind. You will render no real service to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice. For they can have no desire of offerings from the unwilling, unless they are animated by a spirit of contention, which is a thing altogether undivine. Accordingly the true God bestows His blessings alike on wicked men and on His own elect; upon which account He has appointed an eternal judgment, when both thankful and unthankful will have to stand before His bar.” Unquote. Now Tertullian was arguing with the pagan Romans; his oppressors, and he based his argument on natural law, and his argument was weak. The argument of the Romans, which we have only surviving in fragments as the church fathers argued against it was, that the state, and they were right, has to represent a religious perspective. Every law structure is a theology, implicit or explicit. It represents, every state, a theological establishment. If you change the theology of the state, you revolutionize the state, you eliminate the state as it exists. It is a revolution. Rome knew that its life was at stake, it had to kill the Christians or be killed, or else as it later decided, to absorb the Christians and make them bend to their idea by accepting Christianity as the religion of the state and make the state again the overarching institution, the divine human order.

As a result, Tertullian’s argument did not work. It just did not hold water, because it was not based on Scripture. Criminal law is based on theology, it does require coercion. We cannot condemn coercion as such. Moreover, the old medieval argument has simply been bypassed, it has never been answered, and it was simply this. Heresy and unbelief are as dangerous to a society as murder. And in fact can be more dangerous to a society, because a murderer kills one man, but heresy and unbelief can destroy the whole social fabric. We have to say that old medieval argument, while we may not buy the conclusion, has more than a little truth in it, because heresy and unbelief have now worked effectively to bring our social order to its knees. Law and order are crumbling because the theology behind them has been eroded and effectively nullified. Rome knew that to permit Christianity or to permit Christianity on its own terms was suicide. The Bible very obviously, the Roman governors knew just what it contained, required a total reordering of life. The life of Rome was at stake and the issues are the same today. The humanistic state will either destroy us, wipe our Christianity, or be destroyed by us, destroyed by Christianity. The battle is joined. In one state within the past month, a measure was enacted prohibiting any discrimination in Christian schools on the basis of race, color, or creed, meaning that an atheist could apply and teach there and if denied the right to teach and to teach atheism, the school would be guilty of discrimination. Now whether this will hold up in the courts is not yet assured, but there’s no question that this is an opening gun in a battle. As it stands now, a Christian in a state school cannot teach Christianity without offending the court. But now we are told that the ungodly have the right in this particular state to teach at a Christian school, and it’s discrimination if they are forbidden. Make no mistake about it, it is, as it has been from the beginning of history; a life and death struggle. Either the theology of the state is overthrown, or it will overthrow any new religion that comes along and wipe it out.

Now we had another argument, among many others in the early church for freedom of worship, somewhat different from Tertullian’s. Lactantius for example, and I quote, “For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good faith: for the former belong to evils, but the latter to goods; and it is necessary for that which is good to have place in religion, and not that which is evil. For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will be polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much a matter of free-will as religion; in which, if the mind of the worshipper is disinclined to it, religion is at once taken away, and ceases to exist. The right method therefore is, that you defend religion by patient endurance or by death; in which the preservation of the faith is both pleasing to God Himself, and adds authority to religion.” Unquote. But Lactantius’ argument is again not much help, because all he was talking about was a persecuted church, not a church charged with providing a structure for society. Moreover, he never faced the fact that Rome was fighting for its life, as against the church.

Now, one of the problems, however, with the medieval view, which as I have indicated was also the Reformation view with most of the churches, was that to require a theology of the state means the prosecution of dissent and unbelief. But, when you prosecute dissent and unbelief, you wind up basically prosecuting dissent, because the unbeliever is not that vocal with his opinions, he does not feel he has a divine mission, the dissenter does. And therefore the dissenter is more open, and always wherever you had the state enforcing its theology, it’s not the atheists who are persecuted by and large, except with rare cases. It is the dissenter. And as a result, the medieval view has very, very serious problems.

Now, we must do justice to the medieval view and the Reformation view; which were basically the same, these men were not indifferent to the idea of liberty of conscience. Their problem was simply this, how can a state have liberty of conscience for all and yet retain a Christian position? Will not the state soon take an anti-Christian position and wipe out the church? And they were right. They saw the problem. Theology is inseparable from civil government, every civil government is a theology in action. Today our laws are changing as our theology has changed. The fact right now is that in the United States, pornography has more rights than the Christian school. And so we have to recognize the problem, and we have to recognize the integrity of the men who gave answers, however wrong, in the Middle Ages and in the Reformation. Let us examine, for one, the answer of a great Medieval emperor, a man who was an unbeliever, Frederick the Second, the Hohenstaufen. In his Liber Augustalis, in the introduction, he declares and I quote, he cites first let me add, the fact of man’s fallen estate. Although Frederick was not a Christian, he still had the Christian view of man in that he regarded man as depraved, and so after going into this fact; the depravity of man, Frederick the Second declares, and I quote, “Therefore, by this compelling necessity of things and not less by the inspiration of divine providence, princes of nations were created through whom the license of crimes might be corrected. These judges of life and death for mankind might decide, as executers in some way of divine providence, how each man should have fortune, estate, and status. The king of kings and prince of princes demands above all from their hands that they have the strength to render account perfectly of the stewardship committed to them so that they do not permit the holy church, the mother of the Christian religion, to be defiled by the secret perfidies of slanderers of the faith. They should protect her from attacks of public enemies by power of the secular sword, and they should if possible preserve peace, and after the people have been pacified justice, which embrace each other like to sisters.” Unquote. Thus Frederick the Second, though an unbeliever, recognized that the theology of the day was Christian and the world needed a Christian society. That apart from a theology, there was no possibility of any kind of social order. If the theology of the state is not propogated, the state will rapidly change. The United States for example, in the last century, by courts and people, was declared to be a Christian nation. But now it is moving steadily to outlaw Christianity. There are more than a few bills in the hoppers that are aimed in that direction. Somehow, therefore, theology must be taught. Somehow the state must have a theology. Deuteronomy 17, verses 18 through 20 requires the ruler to govern by the Word of God. Moreover, we cannot condemn coercion, although we can say that we do not believe in every kind of coercion, we do practice it at some points. In Proverbs 22, verse 6 we are told “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” We use coercion with children, we use coercion with criminals, we use coercion one with another. We are all coerced. An employer coerces you because he says you either show up for work or you’re fired. Husbands and wives coerce each other with pressures of various sort. Coercion is an everyday reality, so it cannot be condemned. But it cannot be totally our way of life. Neither totally permissive, nor totally coercive societies are the answer. God’s law must govern. We can never be free from our fellow men, but together with them free under God when we are in Christ.

All the church answers have failed. The medieval, Roman, Reformation answer led to the persecution of dissenters. It led not to a missionary church but a persecuting church. The Baptist answer gave freedom of conscience but it has created, and we’ve all become Baptist now in this respect, it has created a secular state. A state now which is turning on the church, turning against Christianity. The key is not the church and our Scripture makes this clear. When God gave the law, he did not create the church as the companion institution to the state. The state, in some sense, has to be catholic, that is the state must be universal in its territorial jurisdiction. It has jurisdiction over every man within its boundaries. But the church cannot have a like catholicity. Its catholicity is of a different sort. And every attempt to make this church a parallel institution to the state is doomed. But to turn the state loose, the Baptistic answer, again dooms us.

Our Scripture makes clear the answer. The school, instruction, teaching, so that when God says I give my law and the nation must hear and obey, he also requires at the same time that all the children be taught, and he lays this responsibility upon the believers, the necessary concomitant to a godly law order is godly teaching according to our text. And this was the responsibility of the Levites. Now the priests were a small minority, theirs was the ecclesiastical function; worship. The Levites were great numbers and the Levites were scattered throughout the land. Their function was teaching. As Deuteronomy 33:10 declares, they shall teach Jacob Thy statutes and Israel Thy law. This teaching function, tying them to the Word of God and the instruction therein, gave the Levites an edge so that we find again and again the Levites did not become apostate as the priests and as the people did. We are told in fact that in II Chronicles 29:34 that they were more righteous, more faithful than the priests. We find as we analyze various documents of ancient Israel whether Talmudic or otherwise, that the central function of the Levites was instruction. Now let us see something further. In Numbers 18, verses 21 through 28 we have the basic law of the tithe. The first tenth that God required, this tenth was to go to the Levites, and one tenth of that then to the priests. Do you see how God appropriates the tithe? Nine-tenths of those committed to instruction, one-tenth to those committed to worship. And today I encounter as I go around speaking, a very heavy emphasis on storehouse tithing, by which they mean the church has to get it all.

Now granted, the Levites had some tabernacle and temple functions; musical and the care of the utensils. But if you stretch it by as big a margin as you want, it still means that only two-tenths of the tithe at most went for worship. The rest went for godly instruction. The Levitical heritage was thus to proclaim the true knowledge of the Word of God, to establish the schools, and the synagogues themselves were part of the Levitical establishment. They grew not out of the temple but out of the Levitical work. Thus, while we cannot underrate the work of the church in terms of Scripture as the body of Christ, as the instrument through which salvation is proclaimed and the elect gathered together to worship God, neither do we have any right to overrate it. And the whole history of the Church, without exception, has been an overrating of the Church. The priestly role, therefore, has been exalted out of measure. The Levitical function tossed to one side. The emphasis on understanding in the early church was intense, the office of elder came from the synagogue; one who taught and enforced the law of God. The emphasis on understanding was so great that one of the key arguments that carried weight with all Jewish believers with regard to tongues was that he who speaks in an unknown tongue, where then is understanding? That was enough to condemn it. Understanding of the Word of God was so important, the function of reaching out to the children was one of the most important things the early church did. In fact, it is a witness to the, perhaps apostasy is too strong a word, but it is in a sense an apostasy from their calling, of Christianity that it has produced voluminous studies on the doctrine of the church, gone through the early church material over and over and over again, to haggle over the role of the elder and of the pastor and of baptism and its mode and this and that and the other thing, and yet an area that is extensively dealt with in the writing of the early church fathers, to my knowledge there is no book on it in English, and I don’t know if there is anything much on it in other languages. What was that? Its work with children, children.

The requirement of instruction was such that the teaching within the home was stressed by a persecuted church, the early church. It would go out under the bridges of Rome, it would go unto the byways where children were normally abandoned and collect those children to rear them up in the instruction of the Lord. That was how it saw its way clear to fulfilling its function as required by God to teach the children. Not only theirs but all children. The abandonment of babies was a routine thing within the empire, in fact it was a routine thing in Northern Europe, in Germany, in France or Gall as it was then known, and in England, wherever the church went. In fact it was a routine thing elsewhere when the church went as to China and Africa and elsewhere, especially of girl babies; routinely abandoned as unwanted. The early church regarded as one of its most important missions the rescue of these children because it had been required by God when He gave His word to Israel as a part of the covenant responsibility to teach the young, and that this was basic to any command of the future. So great was their emphasis on this that even the pagan Romans were fully aware of it and upset about it because it was as effective a missionary weapon as any. Countless children were being reared in the faith. Countless pagans were recognizing that these Christians were a pretty decent lot and well maybe we shouldn’t be as hard on them, I don’t like them, I think what they believe is nonsense, but maybe the government is being too severe in persecuting them. There was an attempt to forbid their actions. It was an instrument of tremendous power.

So much so that because paganism was still rampant after the empire became Christian, numerous emperors dealt with this. Justinian and Theodora in their code dealt with it legally to try to prevent it from happening, established homes for these children, declared that the abandonment of children by parents on their part was a more fearful offense than murder, and did a great deal to establish in every way the rescue of these children and their instruction in the faith. The church cannot be catholic, inclusive of all that is, saved and unsaved. The Christian school can be catholic in this sense. And of course this was the function of tithe agencies in the United States in its early years. In the past 2 or 3 years, an Irish priest making a study of the Irish in America pointed out that the overwhelming majority of Irish in America are not Roman Catholic, they are Protestant, and especially Presbyterian, and that’s true. And it was Christian schools that did it; the Christian schools that prevailed before the state school movement took over.

Moreover, the commission of our Lord is to teach all nations, in Matthew 28:19; to teach and to baptize; school and church, teaching function and ecclesiastical, but the teaching is cited before baptizing. The Christian schools in this country began to do that task very ably. They were dismantled, first of all, because of the Unitarian hostility to Christian education, and second because of the revivalistic arminian hostility and a third reason was that of course, the church began to emphasize itself more than instruction. I submit that the Word of God says that teaching is the means whereby the theology of the state can become a reality; that teaching has a priority on the tithe, that if we do not put our primary emphasis on teaching we will lose both church and state, and that God will judge a generation that feels well the church is more important because we think so, we are churchmen therefore we give it priority, and if God said only one-tenth was to go to the priest that makes no difference, things are different now. The whole weight of Scripture, the whole weight of the early church is against them. God declares in Isaiah 11:9, “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters shall cover the sea.” And that must come about. God has declared it, it shall come about, and the means is through teaching. This is why we have Chalcedon, because we want to restore God’s perspective. The state must have a Christian theology, the church must have a Christian theology, and God declares the means is teaching; teach all nations. When he gave the covenant to Israel, He commanded them to teach. It is time we tried God’s way; the church’s way and the state’s way have failed. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thy Word is truth. O Lord God of hosts, raise up unto Thyself a generation of teachers of Thy Word; men and women who will establish Christian schools, who will in various ways further the instruction of men, women, and children, of nations and of churches, in Thy Word. Use us, O Lord, to this task. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Yes, any questions?

[Audience member] Well I believe this question will be of interest to the people on your circuit, that there has to be Christian parents who are concerned about a safe school, I wonder if you would just, sending their children to just any Christian school would be better than the secular school and would doctrines that they hear in Lutheran schools or Pentecostal schools or Seventh Day Adventist schools be harder to work on than the secularism of the state schools?

[Rushdoony] The question is about sending children to Christian schools with whose theology we may disagree. It is possible that there is somewhere a Christian school that is worse than a public school but I don’t know of any offhand. And the fact is that a Christian school, even though its theology may be different from ours, is still going to be far better than a school in which God is denied, His Word is denied, and any moral law is emphatically put aside. The consequences of the state schools are increasingly appalling, the leftist non-Christian critics themselves say that there are nine million functional illiterates being graduated from the schools now, that are now in the schools that are going to be graduated, and estimates are that already there are nineteen million functional illiterates in the United States, that the number will increase vastly in the next few years because the decline in the state schools is so great. Well, educationally, religiously, morally, the state schools are virtually finished, we cannot be a party to them. It’s only a rare out of the way community where there is any kind of old-fashioned order and discipline in the state schools. Are there any other questions? Yes?

[Audience member] I think that the office of education in Washington came out with a figure of twenty-five million over the {?}.

[Rushdoony] Twenty-five million functional illiterates, yes. That is a new statistic from the office of education in Washington, DC. Well, it’s believable because you certainly encounter evidences of that in stores and shops almost everywhere, to a really startling degree at times. And you encounter incidences of it in colleges and universities. I think I quoted to some of you, or maybe it was here last month, that a professor of a Midwestern school told me if essay type questions were given many of the papers read as though they were written by children with brain damage, that only true and false and completion type questions could be used in tests for the greater majority of students. Now, it’s not lack of IQ in these students, it’s a lack of any kind of education. Yes?

[Audience member] The concept of say eight or nine-tenths percent of the tithe going to education, how does that square with our concept of our Christian schools being free enterprise systems?

[Rushdoony] The Christian schools can be free enterprise systems and still cover the land, because prior to Horace Mann, every child in the United States had a schooling and a good one provided by Christian schools, tithe agencies took care of it. There are today enough churches in the United States to house everybody who would want to go to church in a Sunday, and all this has been done by voluntary giving, not by tithing, just by very minimal giving. With far less than we give to taxes for education, we could establish schools on a voluntary basis to cover the country. And if education, incidentally, were on a purely voluntary basis with no compulsory schooling required, it would not alter the situation at all. I believe that it was Virginia that up until a few years ago, within the last ten years, I may be wrong as to the state, had no compulsory school law. It didn’t mean that there were a lot of children or any children who did not go to school. Yes?

[Audience member] They found statistics that tell you what’s done on these compulsory {?} and they’ve found that no state where seventy percent of the children were already not in schools, {?} the law gain enough support to be passed in order to compel at the most the remaining thirty percent to go back in school. In other words, legislation can only cover the majority of people who are already involved in the educational {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] The other point that I make is this week, on television, there was an analysis of the child daycare centers, comparing the private enterprises and the state supported systems, and the state supported systems cost four hundred percent more than the free market child daycare centers. Child daycare centers {?} twenty-five percent of the state system, and so the state compelled plan now {?} legislation which will compel the doubling or tripling of all tuitions in the private daycare centers through {?}, because they were so discouraged by the constitution of the private schools that it was an unfair constitution they said, and therefore they have to have equality in education in the private schools, and yet the television announcer seemed to be in favor of the same system, said the primary difference was in the goals which were verbally stated by the state education system, rather than the official goal of the private school, which had a lot of {?}.

[Rushdoony] Let’s get those statistics again, the state daycare schools.

[Audience member] Cost four times as much.

[Rushdoony] Cost four times as much as the private. So the state is now going to require that the private raise their tuition as unfair competition. Well that’s state wisdom, statist wisdom for you. Are there any other questions? If not, I’d like, yes?

[Audience member] In Romans 2:6 and 7, can you comment on that?

[Rushdoony] Which?

[Audience member] Romans 2:6 and 7

[Rushdoony] Romans 2:6 and 7. “Who will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life.” Yes, this has to do with the judgment of God, that He will reward us according to our works who are believing. In other words, we are saved by faith, we are rewarded according to works.

[Audience member] What I’ve heard in the explanation of this verse is they say that it doesn’t apply to any person because no one could do that and the way I understand it is that a Christian does do that patient continuance in well doing, and that that’s {?}. You know they would say that you could. You see what I mean?

[Rushdoony] I think that refers to the perseverance of the saints, yes.

[Audience member] Yes. They say that the law is opposed to faith and the way I see it is that you keep the law.

[Rushdoony] Right, exactly, yes.

I’d like to share something with you briefly, it’s in a book by Roger Price, The Great Roob Revolution, which isn’t too much of a book, but this point is interesting. He says, “Let us have an end to the nonsense about understanding being a prerequisite to worldwide amity. There is always far too much understanding in the world and this is what is causing the trouble. Who are the people that you personally really dislike? They are to be found among your relatives, your coworkers, perhaps even your children, in other words people you understand. Men are peaceful, friendly creatures and we find it very difficult if not impossible to hate something we don’t understand. When did we start thinking of the Chinese as grinning and harmless shirt-starchers and begin to regard them as an international menace? When we began to understand what they were really up to. If we didn’t understand Russia, would we need SAC? Did Barry Goldwater or Nelson Rockefeller or Lyndon Johnson have any enemies before they got out in the open and explained themselves so that people could understand them? No one dislikes Wendell H. Morton, because no one knows anything about him except for Mrs. Morton and his son Kenneth who don’t care much for him. If only the world were inhabited entirely by Wendell H. Morton’s.”

And of course that is the modern attitude. Be as impersonal as possible, keep your distance from people, because people are a problem. But of course, one of the marks of grace is love of the brethren; an ability to live with and joy, be patient with and be kindly with Christian brethren, so that whereas the modern world has alternated between love everybody and togetherness and then just avoid everybody, and has found neither to work because in either case they are without grace. With grace we can put up with people, and with grace people put up with us, and this is how we as Christians can live together. Let us bow our heads now for the benediction. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

[End of tape]