Letters

Arguments in favor of a prayer amendment are usually based on symbolism rather than raw moral reasoning. In truth, moral reasoning can be authentically employed in perpetuating either view.

If this acknowledgement is denied, then the issue becomes a "distraction," as Joe Loconte ("Lead Us Not into Temptation," Winter 1995) suggests, with evangelical devotion to the cause somewhat "misplaced."

Inasmuch as school prayer is "symbolic," it mirrors the perception that the moral underpinnings of American society are eroding, if not eroded. The more important question hence might be: What is the fundamental role of the Christian community in contributing to the moral fabric of a wider American culture?

This wider issue requires a wider strategy than mere constitutional revision at the present political time. The common arguments in favor of a prayer amendment are, by themselves, unsatisfactory.

First, prayer is a recognition that the state is not God. While certainly symbolic of a higher truth, it cannot in and of itself guarantee the reverse.

Second, that sundry societal pathologies are to be found in the schools themselves ("Prayer surely won't hurt!") may be true, but is not an argument either. It should be remembered that civil disorder stems not from exclusion of school prayer, but from voluntary exclusion of religion from the lives of America's people. Thus, a prayer amendment is at best a poor antiseptic.

And even when prayer is important to a majority--perhaps as high as 75 percent--of Americans, the truth of the matter is that if this devotion to prayer were taken more seriously and applied in other available contexts, school prayer might be less the political issue that it is.

Some evangelically minded Christians view a prayer amendment as a "jump start" approach to cultural rejuvenation. These individuals would contend that cultural renewal is long and tedious; what has been fairly rapidly eroded takes much longer to restore.

Advocates of a prayer amendment, on the other hand, tend to overlook the fact that legislation is reflective of wider culture and not vice versa. To invert this moral-legal relationship is to miss the broader issues that are facing Christendom.

In sum, prayer amendment advocates will need the inconvenient reminder that they cannot effectively legislate before they have influenced broader culture. One cannot change laws before changing people's minds and habits.

J. Daryl Charles
Resident Scholar
The Wilberforce Forum
Washington, D.C.

A further argument in favor of Joe Loconte's position on prayer in public schools clarifies the difference between religiosity and religion. Religiosity in general transcends the specifics of the Catholic or Lutheran or Baptist or Judaic or Muslim religions. And it is this generalized religiosity that such prayer in public schools embodies--dismissing as trivial the truths of the several great religious traditions that thrive in this country.

Church, synagogue, mosque--everything is interchangeable in such a scheme. Perhaps some religions can accept the dumbing down of religious difference. But the rest of us who seriously practice our respective, contending, and contentious religions must object.

Public prayer removed from the specific setting of faith, practiced piety, and the corporate, sacred community that offers prayer bears little meaning for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

When there is a "we," it is always the mystical body of Christ assembled in the name of Jesus Christ; or it is the holy Israel, speaking to the One "who has sanctified us by his commandments and commanded us"; or it is the Nation of Islam.

True, we worship one and the same God. But to each of us that God is made manifest in specific ways. So far as our deeply held faiths insist, those paths to God, laid out by God through Jesus Christ or through the Torah or through the Prophet form the royal road.

Public prayer that ignores or trivializes and marginalizes the specificity of that holy faith forms an affront to the God who has become known to us in the details of our revealed faiths. Prayer from no one in particular to whom it may concern bears no relationship to the divine service that our several religions conduct.

Jacob Neusner
Professor of Religious Studies
University of South Florida
Tampa, Fla.

In light ofthe neo-paganism to which so many Americans have pledged their allegiance, it may well be that, as Joe Loconte argues, Christians should be wary of school prayer. Nevertheless, the author exaggerates the reliability of private conscience and underestimates the importance of public, communal expressions of faith.

It is quite true, of course, that faith coerced is no faith at all, but that does not mean that all of public life may safely be cleansed of that faith which informs Western Civilization.

Public forms of expression work on private consciences. It is not true, as Loconte suggests, that "rote prayers" and liturgies are mostly empty and meaningless; indeed, evangelicals have their own "liturgies"--repetitive phrases in spontaneous prayers, for example. Such repetitions, they rightly sense, inscribe certain truths in the heart and thus encourage genuine belief and Christian conduct.

Furthermore, Loconte is far too quick to reject the majoritarian argument.

Majority in this case does not refer to shifting numerical majorities in various states of the Union, but to the permanent majority at the very heart of Western culture, which T.S. Eliot rightly observed, cannot remain itself if divorced from Christianity.

Finally, Loconte is too ready to accept the notion, retailed by non- and anti- Christians, that Christianity can legitimize itself only by promoting social progress. He reminds us that Christians objected to past mistreatment of black Americans and ministered to the urban poor. Such service is to be commended, but it ought to be viewed primarily as a sign of that obedience that has, as its principal purpose, His praise and glory.

Lee Congdon
Professor of History
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Va.

Amending the Constitution to permit school prayer admittedly is a thornier problem for religious conservatives than most of us admit. On balance, I am slowly coming around to Loconte's side of the issue. I write, however, to take issue with two of his points.

First, I agree with Loconte's apparent view that state neutrality towards religion is, at least in theory, the best course for a representative democracy. In practice, however, neutrality has serious flaws.

Since the Supreme Court got into the school-prayer business back in the 1960s, separation of church and state has evolved from neutrality among religions to neutrality between religion and secularism. Worse yet, as Loconte recounts, hostility to religion has usually been the means by which the latter form of neutrality has been pursued.

Loconte apparently believe that one can eradicate hostility towards religion while simultaneously retaining the goal of neutrality. I am less sanguine on this score, especially if neutrality between religion and secularism remains the goal.

Ultimately, trying to remain neutral between the claims of religious belief and secularism is like trying to serve two masters at the same time. But as Christ taught, humans cannot do this: We will love one and despise the other.

Second, I find it not a little astonishing that a reputable conservative should premise so much of his argument on diversity and multiculturalism. As we all know, our society faces a growing number of challenges: crime; a growing underclass; rising levels of single-parent households; rampant legal and illegal immigration by persons from the Third World who do not share the language, religion, or culture of most Americans. It is worth remembering, however, that we have been here before.

As David Frum points out in Dead Right, our country faced similar problems during the first two decades of this century. Frum reminds us that our grandparents grew up in cities that, like our own, were violent and unruly. A tide of legal and illegal immigration was bringing to our shores a horde that did not speak our language, did not share our customs, and felt little loyalty to our country. This resulted in an urban proletariat that was not only of unprecedented size, but also poor, violent, and apparently immune to assimilation. The very definition of what it means to be an American was being called into question by a multicultural tidal wave.

Fortunately, the Progressives of that era were able to institute a set of reforms that in fact assimilated virtually all of the new cultures into a single American culture. This American culture was enriched by the new immigrants, but not fundamentally changed. It was possible only because reformers knew what it meant to be an American. They knew America was more than just an idea. They knew that America had a common culture and a common heritage. Assimilating new arrivals to that culture could be painful, but it had to be done and it was done. A nation that was stronger and richer in both a material and a spiritual sense emerged.

For better or worse, the Protestant Consensus was a key building block of the uniquely American culture our parents and grandparents passed down to us. To be sure, as Loconte points out, this led some Jews and many Catholics to opt out of certain key institutions, especially educational ones. As many scholars have pointed out, however, modern American Jews and Catholics have largely assimilated to the Protestant Consensus.

Accordingly, I think it is now fair to be more concerned with the possibility that the absence of school prayer will lead evangelicals (and maybe even some Jews and Catholics) to opt out of public education than to be concerned that school prayer will deter Jews and Catholics from opting in.

To be sure, as Loconte points out, our country includes a growing array of religions (and even more New Age cults)that have not accepted the Protestant Consensus. If I am right in believing that the Protestant Consensus has social as well as religious significance, and House Speaker Gingrich is right in believing American civilization is in grave danger, starting the school day off with a generic Protestant prayer could become an important component in restoring the notion of a unified American culture. Accordingly, I reject Loconte's conclusion that school prayer is not an appropriate tool of civic order. To the contrary, I suspect that restoration of civic order may not be possible without some attempt to use the public schools to inculcate the virtues inherent in the Protestant Consensus.

Stephen M. Bainbridge
Professor of Law
University of Illinois
Champaign, Ill.

Note carefully that the school prayer amendment does not require prayer; it permits prayer. That is a whale of a difference.

Paul H. Davis
Princeton, W.Va.

Joe Loconte's article is both provocative and persuasive. Advocates of officially permitted prayer simply neglect today's "profound cultural and religious diversity."

When I attended public school in York, Pennsylvania, in the 1930s, Americans were far more homogenous. Along with the Pledge of Allegiance, we recited verses from the Old or New Testament without comment.

This unchallenged practice did not violate the establishment clause any more than etching "In God We Trust" on our coins.

Ironically, formal prayer in the schools can have the unintended effect of trivializing religion. One sassy pupil, exposed to a canned prayer, said he thought of God as an "oblong blur."

Certainly, the schools--public and private--have an obligation to teach about the impact of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam on history and culture. And at the very least they should acknowledge the fact that the American founders believed in the majesty of God and recognized that this nation and every nation stands under divine mercy and judgement.

Parents concerned about secularization and moral decay should direct their energy to restoring the vitality of our Judeo-Christian heritage and encouraging loving two- parent families that honor God and teach their children the difference between right and wrong.

Ernest W. Lefever
Senior Fellow
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Washington, D.C.

Joe Loconte has both misunderstood my views and neglected he fundamental rationale for school prayer in his article. He gives only three arguments, what he calls "primary arguments," for school prayer.

First, he says, there is the historical approach: "American society always has been religious and public prayers seems an appropriate reflection of the nation's emphasis on faith and religious freedom."

Second, a religious rationale: "Schools and other public institutions have a responsibility to acknowledge Deity--."

Third, school prayer "could help slow the social chaos and spiritual decay that are infecting youth culture"--the plea for civil order as he puts it. These may be arguments for school prayer, but they are in fact only supporting arguments and not "primary" arguments.

The fourth, and missing rationale, is the guarantee of religious liberty and freedom of religious expression promised in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This religious liberty rationale is of paramount importance. Loconte includes a highly sentimentalized form of this argument in his first suggested rationale for school prayer, but I argue that religious liberty is more than an "emphasis" in America, it is part of our raison d'ê tre. The American experiment, a novus ordo saeclorum, depends upon the freely expressed opinions of its people. Free expression includes religious expression. Religious expression includes prayer.

Loconte is accurate to say that I am among those religious conservatives who agree with the Supreme Court's 1962 "ruling banning state-sponsored school prayer--." However, I do not agree, as he implies that "student-led prayers can have a coercive effect in the unique environment of public education." As long as these prayers are student-initiated, student-sponsored, and student-led, they are no more coercive than student-initiated, student-sponsored, and student-led discussions of religious topics at recess. Surely Loconte does not believe in a religiously sanitized playground.

Furthermore, I have said, "I think our society will not survive unless there is a broad-based religious commitment, but it is not the responsibility of the government to promote it." However, I have also argued that government has the obligation not to prohibit the religious commitments or expressions of its citizens. It hardly seems promotional for public schools to allow students to pray, as they feel led, without disrupting class time. In fact, to prohibit such student prayer, violates First Amendment guarantees against such censorship and suppression of religious speech.

The Christian Life Commission is the religious-liberty agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest non-Catholic religious denomination, with over 15.4 million members in over 38,400 churches. We will oppose state sponsorship of school prayer. We will, however, vigorously support religious liberty. The religious liberty rationale entails that students of religious faith, or non-religious commitments for that matter, should be free to express their religion or non-religion in their classroom. The First Amendment's "free exercise" clause demands no less than free exercise.

Does the religious liberty rationale entail that Christian students may hear the prayers of Jewish students, Muslim students, or New Age students? Of course.

In a free democracy, we must protect everyone's right to religious expression. Neither school officials nor student majorities may pick and choose which religious expression to permit or disallow.

Prayer goes up, it doesn't come down. That is, students themselves determine the content and frequency of prayer, not government or school boards, and an open forum means a forum open to all students' religious convictions.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, "The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, not under its jurisdiction."

Richard D. Land
Executive Director
Southern Baptist Christian
Life Commission
Nashville, Tenn.

"Reel Politik: Great Conservative Cinema," by Michael Smith (Fall 1994), was great, but I thought it missed the mark in a few cases.

The Mission, I agree, is "a beautiful film." But hardly "on every level." It is both philosophically and theologically as liberal as Howard Metzenbaum.

Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) has penetrated the barrier of dense jungle and primitive culture hoping to establish a mission to the savage Guarani Indians. Eventually, he converts them and builds a mission in their midst. But to what does he convert them? That is the question by which this movie must be judged. For it is upon that gospel that this movie is built.

Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro) learns that gospel. He is a mercenary slave trader who has killed his own brother in a jealous rage. For six months he has languished in a stupor of self-hate and hopelessness. He is beyond redemption--or so he believes. But the gospel of Father Gabriel changes his mind. The gospel of the Bible is never mentioned to poor Captain Mendoza. The gospel of The Mission is the gospel of "love," small "l." Love your fellow man, sacrifice yourself, do good expecting nothing in return. And if you aren't sure how to do "good," just keep watching.

Rodrigo follows Father Gabriel along the tortuous trail to his jungle mission. In penance he drags along a large net filled with the armaments of his mercenary days--the great burden of past sins. But this is no Pilgrim's Progress. The burden is not lifted. It is finally cut away by his own loving submission to his former victims. When he takes the Jesuit vow, he is converted not to God but to "love."

Meanwhile, the jungle commune has been betrayed by cutthroat capitalists, cutthroat governments, and the politics of Rome. Father Gabriel determines to defend the mission with love (non-violence) alone. Brother Rodrigo chooses instead to fight for right. "If might be right, then there's no place for love in the world," Father Gabriel tells him. "Maybe so. Maybe so," he then muses. But "if you are right, God will bless you."

The massacre that follows, however, bespeaks little blessing on Rodrigo's decision. He is crushed. Might, to be sure, is depicted as anything but right. It is despicable. Therefore, although Father Gabriel is crushed as well, it appears there is a place for love in the world. And how is love defined? You must answer the altar call actually printed across the closing scene. Take up the continuing struggle in today's Third World. Come to a sympathetic alliance with liberation theology, i.e. Marxism. It seems no coincidence that radical leftist priest Daniel Berrigan was an influential advisor to the producers of this movie, and appears in a cameo role.

We are left at the end with a smoldering shell of the mission church and the only survivors--one canoe filled with Guarani children. They doff their scant clothing (vestiges of a culture that betrayed them) and return to the depths of the jungle whence they came.

Their simple faith has been destroyed by the evil fires of imperialism. Their faith in God destroyed? No. That isn't faith that can be destroyed by fire. That was not their faith. Their faith was a faith of the mission, and the mission is gone. The gospel of The Mission leaves them forever lost in their nakedness.

Thanks for recognizing the importance of philosophical discernment in movie viewing. It's a powerful medium.

May I suggest another go at it sometime? Perhaps you should give attention to The Brothers Karamazov, The Outsiders, The Secret of Nimh, Sergeant York, and The Trip to Bountiful.

Norm Bomer
Senior Editor
God's World Publications
Asheville, N.C.

Michael Smith should watch Stand and Deliver again. The hero and his students fight with the school administration about having to take a standardized test a second time.

The students had achieved unusually high scores on the first test, but their mistakes were more uniform than was statistically likely. Although, both of these points are of considerable mathematical interest, the movie dismisses them as racism.

The real problem with Stand and Deliver is that it contains no mathematics at all. With all of the cinematic resources that might have been used to convey an intuitive grasp of calculus to the high school audience, the movie simply perpetuated the taboo against any substantial intellectual content in a movie. There was romantic interest, the struggle against racism, Latino pride, but no calculus.

Philip Gleason
Boca Raton, Fla.

I found mildly amusing Michael Smith's attempts to classify the movies he reviewed as conservative, but I cannot sit idly by and allow him to expropriate Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, one of the greatest American liberal films ever made.

Capra was a liberal Democrat and a devout Catholic, and his films portray his strongly felt political and spiritual values quite clearly. One of Capra's greatest populist heroes is George Bailey, the ultimate liberal activist, who repeatedly forgoes the material life (and opportunities to seek his fortune) to ensure that the "little guy" gets a chance to own his own home.

There was not a lot of money in running a small-town savings and loan, but Bailey sticks around to prevent the quintessential wealthy, greedy, heartless Republican,Old Man Potter, from shafting the poor, working men of Bedford Falls.

Potter would certainly have been a Reagan Republican and member of the RNC's Team 100, screaming for low taxes on the rich, and complete deregulation of everything to increase his fortune at the expense of the common man.

At the same time, he would insist publicly that it was for the poor's own good, and that it would all somehow trickle down. Maybe he would have believed his own self- serving rhetoric.

As for Capra's religious message, It's a Wonderful Life, like many of Capra's films, is an allegorical retelling of the story of Jesus. Bailey forgoes the material world, continually sacrificing his own chances for comfortable living, to fight for the meek and the downtrodden. He goes through a symbolic crucifixion on behalf of the people (and his own people seem to reject him), and then is symbolically resurrected (Capra always preferred Christmas over Easter for his resurrections; see Meet John Doe).

Notwithstanding conservative attempts to classify Christian values as conservative, Capra's religious views and interpretations of Jesus, comported with his liberalism. To Capra, Christianity was about humility, generosity, love, and caring for the working-class poor who shall inherit the earth.

This was quite different than the conservative brand of religion used to justify capital punishment, anti-civil rights battles, archaic notions about a "woman's place," indoctrination by public school prayer, discrimination against gays, hate-mongering against immigrants and minorities, low taxes on the wealthy, and undermining of public education through private school vouchers.

So if a conservative wishes to fallaciously label most of America's great movies conservative, many of us will have a good chuckle. But don't mess with Frank Capra, Mr. Smith, because you're not the type he would have sent to Washington.

Adam J. Rubinson
Washington, D.C.

I was much amused by the irony of the inclusion of Kirk Douglas's Spartacus in the article on great conservative cinema.

Your writer is obviously too young to recall the controversy that surrounded the making of that film, which was similar in scope to that over The Last Temptation of Christ or Oliver Stone's JFK.

Both the author of the original "Spartacus" historical novel, Howard Fast, and the screenwriter who adapted it for film, Dalton Trumbo, had been severely red-baited by the ignorant conservatives of their time; Trumbo in fact even lost several years of his life by being imprisoned by the 1950s conservatives' version of The Holy Inquisition, the House Committee on Un-American Activities for refusing to testify under oath about his affiliations with communists. When Kirk Douglas bravely stood by Trumbo by selecting him to adapt the script for Spartacus upon his release from prison, right-wing groups called the entire project a communist plot.

Had your magazine been in existence at the time, you would surely have been among the small-minded conservatives crying for the film's suppression.

So choose: was the HUAC truly an out-of-control witch-hunt that destroyed the lives and careers of innocent people, as the liberals assert, or was one of your great conservative films actually penned by a Communist?

Steve Trout
Maryville, Tenn.

Martin's version of Cyrano, was too, for that matter.

Tim W. Ferguson
"Business World" Columnist
Wall Street Journal
New York, N.Y.

I believe that Barbara von der Heydt in "Russia's Spiritual Wilderness" (Fall 1994) has identified some of the real problems in Russia today. As she correctly says, many of them have their origins in the social and political distortions brought about by almost four generations of Soviet rule.

Among such problems were the necessity for public lying and hypocrisy accompanied by deliberate distortions of historical facts (Aleksander Solzhenitsyn called it "the culture of the lie") and a deeply flawed definition of civic responsibility, which claimed to foster a benevolent "collectivism," but actually undermined any possibility of a genuinely collective moral vision.

Other problems include a crude, dehumanizing version of atheism which attempted to head off any deeply considered and sincerely felt religious notions of God. The only divinity was supposed to be a group of leaders whose only motivation turned out to be a greedy and self-serving attachment to wealth and power. Their government led to conditions which could, but will not inevitably, produce a hideous Zhirinovsky-like fascism in the near future.

I think her analysis could use further thinking along the following lines: In spite of Soviet intentions, the previous regime did not succeed in producing a genuinely atheist society, as opposed to the heavily propagandized Potemkin Village of Soviet-sponsored atheism. Such people as Solzhenitsyn, the martyred Aleksander Men, Valery Borshchov, and many others are paradoxical, but natural, products of the Soviet Regime, under which they grew up, heroically battling against cruel suppression.

The Russian people, and other nationalities in the USSR, did not lose God, contrary to the assertions both of communist apparatchiki and some Western proselytizers. Russian education, to which von der Heydt only briefly alludes, is presently taking gigantic steps toward a program which has at least a realistic possibility of opening the way toward a better Russian society.

Alcoholism, at least in certain important Russian social sectors, is not going up, but down: You can no longer retain your job if you come to work drunk, and significant numbers of people have found meaningful work which pulls them away from heavy drinking. There are many kind of new enterprises and institutions attracting the energetic enthusiasm of people who have for years and even decades eagerly anticipated this opportunity.

Von der Heydt is absolutely right when she says it is our real moral duty to help them in ways both sacred and secular. Such help must be given adroitly, with real sensitivity to Russian feelings and real knowledge of Russian and Soviet history and culture.

Irwin Weil
Professor of Russian and
Russian Literature
Northwestern University
Evanston, Ill.

In contrast to the shallow reporting which characterizes so many of the commentaries about events in Russia written by Western journalists and academics, Barbara von der Heydt's essay is an insightful analysis. After four years of involvement with Russian educators and frequent contact with many of the "moral renewers" described in her article, I can affirm von der Heydt's assessment that "without cultural regeneration, neither economic nor political reform will take root and bear fruit."

Not only is there a need for bridges to be built between those committed to economic and political reform in Russia and the leaders of moral renewal, but von der Heydt's essay also makes clear that there is a need for a major reassessment of U.S. foreign aid currently contributes to the problems.

I still have not forgotten an observation made to me two years ago by a leading Agency for International Development official responsible for assistance to the "Newly Independent States." He said "AID has no interest in educational reform in Russia--we are only interested in short-term political fixes."

Teaching Russians the techniques of democratic politics and the free market without a serious discussion of the moral and ethical foundations upon which these systems are grounded makes no sense and is a waste of resources. Thoughtful Russians are asking for counsel on the deeper questions of moral and spiritual renewal; many Russian intellectual leaders recognize the moral vacuum left by the collapse of Marxism- Leninism. What are we doing to strengthen them as they attempt to build a "new Russia"?

In Russian higher education, there is an unprecedented openness to reform. There is a strong desire to "humanize" issues. There is also a great interest in character development, which will prepare students to be citizens of a new democratic Russia. The effort, in partnership with Russians, to establish the Russian-American Christian University in Moscow, the first Christian liberal-arts university in Russia's history, is only one sign of the new opportunities that now exist. I hope that we are perceptive enough to understand this as we follow developments in Russia, aided by insightful observers such as von der Heydt.

John A. Bernbaum
Vice President and
Director, Russian Initiative
Christian College Coalition
Washington, D.C.

As a 40-year student of Soviet communism, I certainly agree with Barbara von der Heydt's grim article and her conclusion that "freedom cannot take root without moral reform."

However, I believe that more emphasis should be placed on the chief cause of the spiritual wilderness, namely, the 77-year existence of the communist system imposed on the Russians as well as other nationalities in the former Soviet Union by party-state terrorist control.

It should be stressed that communism was not a product of the "Russian soul," but an international ideology which took over Russia in the 1917 October Revolution. After that time the GULAG, chief administration of concentration camps, was the powerful terrorist weapon of communist morality, which allowed the nomenklatura to do anything necessary to build and spread the communist system in the international arena.

In the Soviet Union alone, about 60 million people lost their lives in the process of building a communist society. Those who have survived have suffered greatly both intellectually and morally, and it will take years for them to recover.

The long existence of the Soviet Union and other communist-controlled states was facilitated, it should be admitted, by the ignorance and cynicism of many Western democratic governments. Not only did they grant diplomatic recognition to communist- controlled states which were not nation-states under international law, but they also subsidized and thus prolonged their life by economic and trade relations and technology transfers. Many experts believe now that without those subsidies the economic collapse of the communist-controlled states would have come much earlier.

The first American president since Herbert Hoover who refused to deal with the Soviet Union as a conventional great power--a mirror-image of the United States--was Ronald Reagan, who called it the "Evil Empire" and attacked its communist morality.

His policy of economic and military pressure was obviously a major cause of Soviet collapse. It was not containment or detente, but Reagan's "peace through strength" policy that facilitated his early intentions to eliminate the communist threat.

Charles T. Baroch
Bethesda, Md.

I find the comment by Barbara von der Heydt that the "Russian Orthodox Church is in a poor position to meet the Russian people's spiritual hunger," offensive, arrogant, and more than a little disingenuous. To begin with, does Von der Heydt see anything in the "Christian West" that is better? Does she promote Protestantism and, if so, which one of the thousands of denominations does she suggest? Certainly not the large, "main-line" churches that have embraced abortion, homosexual advocacy, and hosts of other social evils while abandoning virtually all of traditional Christian beliefs.

And what hope is there in "fundamental" Protestantism? For one thing, they would, in total ignorance of the Russian culture and people, try to efface every vestige of Orthodoxy just as surely as did the Communists since they interpret it as being either papist or pagan. Furthermore, most fundamentalist Protestants have little knowledge and less understanding of Christian history prior to the Reformation and tend to see everything in light of that historic event. Yet, as each group disagrees with its fellows and feels free to go off and start still another "denomination," we see proof that the abiding and binding truth of Christianity does not reside within this religious movement, however sincere the individual believer.

And what about Roman Catholicism? The Catholic Church of Western Europe and the United States is often no better than main-line Protestantism.

While it is true that there are troubles in the Church in Russia, Westerners must remember that Orthodoxy has provided more Christian martyrs in the last 70 years than there had been in the previous two millenia. Bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and lay people died in the tens of millions. And still, the Church survived, her people willing to risk torture, imprisonment, and death to be a part and make their children part of her.

Yes, there are still KGB agents in the Russian Orthodox Church, but Western churches have also been infiltrated and, in many cases, completely overwhelmed by a host of anti-Christian philosophies and personages.

Politically compromised Orthodox priests and bishops constitute far less of a danger than do the Bishop Spongs, Jimmy Swaggarts and Father Foxes in the West. The Orthodox Church, steadfast and unchanged since the 4th century, has needed no Reformation nor does she changes her doctrines to satisfy the "politically correct." She endures despite infiltration and savage persecution, while most of the "churches" in the West have capitulated without a shot being fired or a life being lost in defense of the Faith.

Valerie H. Protopapas
Executive Secretary and Educational Director
Orthodox Christians for Life
Melville, N.Y.

Although we knew that the euphoria many of us experienced when Soviet communism collapsed would not last, we could scarcely brace ourselves sufficiently against the hammerings of ensuing events. Russia's progress out of the abyss is painfully halting, at best. So we find ourselves in a state of emphatic ambivalence, pulled between the poles of despair and hope. Our reservations are encapsulated in Barbara von der Heydt's "Russia's Spiritual Wilderness." Negative comments outweigh positive ones two to one. Yet affirmation prevails by the end, and properly so, I think.

Von der Heydt is of course correct that moral renewal is the sine qua non for the political and economic reforms required to make of devastated Russia a normal society.

Policy wonks above all others need to understand that, in a moral vacuum, programmatic proposals are futile. As Michael Novak remarked, "The free society is moral, or not at all." But what do we see in Moscow? Old apparatchiki thrive as new businessmen. Power-hungry ideologues of extreme Left and extreme Right combine to throttle reform efforts. Zhirinovsky and company co-opt the beautiful word "patriot." In short, Dostoevsky's The Devils remains as prophetic as ever.

What Russia most needs now is to come to terms with its atrocity-riddled past in a spirit of repentance, both personal and national. For a long-Christian nation, the likeliest route to catharsis is religious revival.

That one is underway we do not know from the Western press. Here, too, von der Heydt helps us, with her informative book, Candles Behind the Wall. Into the confusion enters Solzhenitsyn, whom von der Heydt shrewdly highlights. Now with his own television program, he is the primary messenger of Russian repentance. As in America for two decades, so in Russia today, we will underestimate his appeal the populace if we listen only to the intellectuals.

Who knows what rough beast slouches toward a Russian Bethlehem to be born? For the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren, this story will be one of great drama and world-historical importance.

Von der Heydt magnificently shows us how to approach our reading of it.

Edward E. Ericson Jr.
Professor of English
Calvin College
Grand Rapids, Mich.

Events in Chechnya have illustrated that the crisis in Russia is indeed a moral one which has political consequences. The newborn democracy in Russia may be strangled in its infancy. Russian reformers fear for the future of the country. For example, Duma members Valery Borschov and Gleb Yakunin, who were in Chechnya in January to monitor the invasion, have soundly condemned the action, and are perplexed at the slowness of the West to do the same.

They say the door to freedom in Russia that swung open dramatically in 1991 may be swinging closed already.

It is necessary to act now to encourage the few lights of moral, spiritual and intellectual renewal in Russia which illuminate the darkening landscape. The cells of civil society that have sprung up in Russia need to put down roots and grow. Their success, or lack of it, may well determine what era will follow Yeltsin.

Unfortunately, the kind of change in Russia which is urgently ended, as confirmed by Edward Ericson, cannot be brought about with a "quick fix," the kind sought by AID officers John Bernbaum rightly condemned as short-sighted.

The Russian-American Christian University which Bernbaum is co-founding is exactly the kind of long-term investment needed to shape the intellectual and moral climate.

Irwin Weil correctly pointed out that there are a number of efforts underway in Russian education aimed at revitalizing the nation. Aleksander Abramov's project to rewrite the textbooks for the Russian school system to include moral teachings has produced many manuscripts already, but funding is still needed from the West to print the books. The urgency of such a project is evident to anyone who understands the power of ideas.

The conclusions presented in "Russia's Spiritual Wilderness" are those of Russians, many of whom I have known for some years.

The Orthodox cited say there is a need for renewal among their own ranks. The remarks of Valerie Protopapas are evidence of the inability of some Orthodox to acknowledge the truth of Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." We are all found wanting: that means Protestants, Catholics, and every stripe of believer, including Orthodox. Obviously the Western churches are in a state of need as well. Every church is flawed and in need of forgiveness, as is every person, myself included.

In a presentation in Moscow this past December Zoya Krakhmalnikova, a devout Russian Orthodox author who was jailed in the 1980s for her writings, described three acute ailments of her country: "The hatred that destroyed the soul of Russia," resurgent nationalism, and the "illness of the church which is an absolute catastrophe for our country." She calls for repentance and renewal. Russian Orthodox priest Father Alexander Borisov, in his recently released book The Fields are Ripe, takes the church he loves to task. "It's a paradox, but our church had preached not Jesus Christ but more itself, its own regulations, legends, icons, rituals, chanting and so on." Father Alexander has been attacked publicly by elements of the Orthodox Church as a "heretic" for such utterances.

The main issue is not the church, but the character of Russia. Recent events indicate that even democratic-minded reformers may opt for untruth and abuse of force, in the absence of a moral code that prohibits them.

Until the leadership of Russia is willing to acknowledge a power higher than its own, and act accordingly, the country will continue to flounder on the shoals of self- interest, corruption, and chaos.

Sadly, Stephen Glass's article "Yes We Kenosha" (Fall 1994) demonstrates the kind of facile grand-standing that so often undermines the credibility of conservative policy positions.

Yes, the "Kenosha miracle," such as it is, has brought stability to the economy of southeastern Wisconsin. Credit must go to local and state officials who worked to bring new businesses into the area; credit must also go to workers who bounced back from what was for many a deep personal loss.

That the complex drama of a community in transition can be reduced by Glass to trite sloganeering--e.g. "Doomsayers Silenced," "A Victory for the Market"--should give pause to serious students of democracy.

Glass would have us believe that because Kenosha prospered in the aftermath of the plant closing, it provides "a testimony to the resiliency of market capitalism."

Yet he tell you nothing of events that led up to the closing, nothing of the new assembly plant AMC was preparing to build in Kenosha, nothing of Chrysler's commitment to produce cars in Kenosha for three to five years after acquiring AMC (the closing came within less than a year), nothing of the betrayal workers felt at the hands of their elected representatives.

Glass praises Governor Tommy Thompson's tax policies, but fails to mention that he actively supported a state-sponsored lawsuit against Chrysler, as did local politicians during their election campaigns.

Quoting me out of context, Glass suggests that I "can't comprehend" why people welcomed the shutdown, yet neglects to say that a major portion of my book, The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Postindustrial America, is devoted to understanding this point of view. Kenosha's uneven development--which benefits some, but not others--was achieved at the expense of democratic ideals.

Do the ends justify any means?

Kathryn Marie Dudley
Assistant Professor of
American Studies
Yale University
New Haven, Conn.

I welcome Kathryn Marie Dudley's acknowledgement that the "Kenosha Miracle" has brought stability to southeastern Wisconsin's economy. While her 200-page book details the pain of autoworkers and their children in the wake of the plant closing, she neglects to mention the town's post-Chrysler renaissance.

Since the plant closed in December 1988, the unemployment rate has averaged 5.7 percent, less than half the mean of 11.6 percent during the five years preceding the shutdown. Average annual wages have increased nearly $2,000 per person and 33 percent more employers now operate in the Kenosha area. Moreover, housing sales more than doubled, and although homes used to linger on the market for months, they now usually sell within 90 days.

Kenosha is a tribute to low taxes and deregulation; it demonstrates the beauty of American capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit.