More than sixty years ago, in the midst of World War II, theologian
Harry Emerson Fosdick preached one of the great sermons of the twentieth century. At the time, the sermon shocked some of the listeners, and engendered a good deal of dislike directed toward Fosdick. The title of Fosdick's sermon was "Worshipping the Gods of a Beaten Enemy."
Not only was WW II raging, Fosdick was also in the midst of his own war, a theological war against a rising tide of radical fundamentalism and biblical inerrancy that threatened to wash away centuries of Christian thought. Confident in the winning of both these wars, Fosdick worried about the aftermath. He worried that victory itself would be a kind of defeat. He fretted that Americans, conquering over fascism abroad and intolerance at home, would adopt both the tactics and the attitudes of those they had broken.
The worries that he expressed in the middle of the twentieth century should speak to us in the twenty-first. Not just in Iraq, not just in our churches, but also as we face the results of a historic election.
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat. -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
In building his great sermon, Fosdick turned to the story related in 2nd Chronicles chapter 25. In another of the exploits of the ancient Hebrews, one of several authors involved in Chronicles records that Amaziah, king of Judah, attacked and defeated the neighboring Edomites. However, having destroyed the Edomites capital and crushed their military, Amaziah had the statues of the Edomite gods carted back to Judah. There, new temples were constructed in which the Edomite statues were erected and their gods worshipped.
The story from 2nd Chronicles is a literal example, but Fosdick's meaning was more general. In any conflict, he said, there is a tendency for the victor to take on the character of the vanquished. When your enemy is regarded as not only inhumane, but inhuman, it's only a matter of time before you treat them just as badly as you think they've been treating you.
If you think your enemy doesn't respect the rights of soldiers, it's that much easier to dismiss the rights of their soldiers. If you think your enemy is lawless, it's that much easier to go beyond the law in their pursuit. If you think your enemy employs torture, it's that much easier to use torture against them.
And having employed ruthlessness, lawlessness, and inhumanity against your enemy, it's all too easy to bring it home, sit up new temples in your towns, and courts, and congress, and to worship the very ideals you set out to end.
When you fight a monster, beware lest you become a monster. -- Fredrich Nietzche
More recently, in his essay "You can Learn from Your Enemies," theology professor, J. Ellsworth Kallas, revisited Fosdick's words. In his essay, Kallas mentioned the story of a man whose child had been murdered. During the trial, the man charged at the suspects shouting "I will chase you all the way to hell!" Hatred can spread like a wildfire. From a single spark, it can consume a people. Worst of all, is that condition where people feel not only hatred, but justified hatred.
In contrast to the hatred of the man who lost a child, Rev. Kallas points to the example of Booker T. Washington. Born a slave, and buffeted by the actions of racists all his life, Washington must surely have been inclined to strike back. However, he swore that he would never "stoop so low" as to hate another person.
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
In Iraq, we've already seen the temptations to use the same kind of techniques we suspect our opponents of using. Already some people have "stooped low" enough to use torture. And some politicians, President Bush among them, have stooped low enough to suggest that these techniques are all right when facing "this kind of enemy."
There are some enemies that should always be enemies, not people, but things like torture, inequity, and intolerance. We have to keep our fight against these enemies, and not welcome them into our homes.
For Democrats, now facing a victory that's been a long time in coming, there's a struggle ahead. Having seen the evidence that the worst element among Republicans worked to repress liberal voters, it's going to be hard not to rush toward techniques that repress conservatives. Having seen the evidence that Republicans in congress have worked to pass legislation using every trick to benefit their friends regardless of the effect on the nation, it's going to be hard not to do the same. Having been on the receiving end of Republican moves to lock them out of the process, it's going to be very tempting to look for payback.
In short, the idea that "we have to play as dirty as they," is going to emerge in a thousand variations from a million throats. But we have to beware, or we'll find ourselves setting up the idols of everything we despised and going on our knees before them.
Sometimes people can become our enemies because they are part of a cause or movement with which we disagree, perhaps even to the point of despising the movement's supporters. It's difficult to separate people from causes. If the cause is our enemy, individuals easily become personifications of the cause; and human as we are, we find emotional relief in having a person on whom to concentrate our anger instead of something so nebulous as a point of view... It is good to be concerned about causes and issues, it is dangerous and destructive to allow a cause to make someone our enemy. -- J. Ellsworth Kallas
Have a good Sunday. Celebrate your friends and the causes you support. And remember to choose your enemies well. Hate is a very powerful emotion, and it shouldn't be squandered while those old enemies of injustice, poverty, and war still remain.