INTERVIEW:
William Sloane Coffin
August 27, 2004 Episode no. 752
Read Bob Abernethy's full interview with William Sloane Coffin here:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week752/interview1.htmlQ: Why do you think that is, in the country as a whole? Why aren't people in the streets today the way they were in the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement?
A: We're prosperous. ... And now, of course, fear has taken hold, and in life you can either follow your fears or be led by your values, by your passions. Now we have an administration which sponsors fear -- of immigrants, homosexuals, crime, terrorists particularly. And this fear-mongering, I'm afraid, is quite deliberate because the more you can make people fear, the more a government can control you. I've seen that in many countries, and now I see it in the United States, where the administration is engaging in fear-mongering. Everybody is fearful. The Congress is made up of practicing cowards, and people don't feel a sense of accountability for what the nation should stand for -- and money doesn't help.
<snip>
Q: Where does the rise of conservatism, especially on the religious Right among Protestant evangelicals, fit into this whole thing?
A: I think most people prefer certainty to truth, and when they feel insecure and want to secure themselves against a sense of insecurity, they engage in what psychiatrists call "premature closure." They close off too early. I'm often asked what I think of the Christianity of President Bush. I think his God is too small. After all, it's a profound Christian conviction that we all belong one to another, every one of us on the face of the Earth -- from the pope to the loneliest wino, and that's the way God made us. Christ died to keep us that way. Our sin is always that we're putting asunder what God has joined together. For every serious believer the question arises: Who is big enough to love the whole world? How, for instance, can the president call Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the axis of evil when all of humanity suffers immeasurably more from environmental degradation, pandemic poverty, and a world awash with weapons? Our God is too small, and then our God is much too nationalistic. A good patriot is not a nationalist. What really puzzles me about the Christian Right is how they can applaud the messianic militarism of the president, a kind of divinely ordained cleansing fire of violence, all in the name of Jesus Christ, the mirror opposite of the Jesus we find in the four Gospels.
I would like to say that for the president to offer a constitutional amendment is very painful. He believes that all people are not created equal, not if they're gays and lesbians. And he wants a constitutional amendment to reinforce the inequality. That's a cruel, cruel thing to do. If he had any more feel for what the suffering of the gay and lesbian crowd is all about, if he'd just be available to the suffering, he'd understand that it's not their outward expression, it's the inner connection that really counts. And he ought to know that straights have not cornered the market on life-sustaining, deep-caring love. Gays can do that just as well as straights. It's like Christians and Jews. They are different -- not different up, not different down, just different. Gays and straights, they're different. Not different up, not different down, just different. And what the world needs is a pluralistic vision of love, if we're going to survive.
Q: Many, many religious conservatives read the same Scripture that you do and come out very differently on social issues. Why?
A: I think they read the Book of Revelation more than they do the gospel. This apocalyptic view which allows them to substitute fate for faith doesn't make them feel accountable in the same way. Now, if you read the Gospels, you know Jesus was servant of the poor. So how can you say compassionate conservatism should be directed primarily at CEOs and unborn babies? Why doesn't the Christian Right pay attention to hunger, homelessness, poor education, absent health benefits of babies already born? I'm not saying social justice is the same thing as the gospel; it isn't, but social justice is at the heart of the gospel, not ancillary to it. And that seems to be an understanding that is, unfortunately, not very deeply appreciated here -- not in Latin America, though.
<snip>
Q: What's the essential connection for you between religious faith and justice?
A: Justice is at the heart of religious faith. It's not something that is tacked on. And justice is not charity. Charity tries to alleviate the effects of injustice. Justice tries to eliminate the causes of injustice. Charity is a personal disposition. Justice is public policy. What this country needs, what I think God wants us to do, is not practice piecemeal charity but engage in wholesale justice. And that's not only to erase or greatly reduce the wage gap and the living standards in America, but really to be committed to doing something about the horrible, really horrible poverty of at least one third of the people on the planet. If you want to do something good for national security, and every American should, take billions of dollars and wage war against world poverty. That would have a very sobering effect on terrorism. Terrorism now has a wonderful recruitment policy supplied by the United States foreign policy. If we were serious, with other nations, to engage the war on poverty around the world, that would stem the flow of recruits to the ranks of terrorists.
<snip>
Q: What should we be mindful of when we make defense policy?
A: The art of defense is not to lose from within what you're defending against from without. In defending against terrorism, it's a great danger that we become like terrorists. We've become self-righteous. They certainly are self-righteous. We've become vengeful. "Vengeance is mine. I will repay," saith the Lord. We forget that. With the present attorney general, I fear all the time that he's going to lose from within the rights we're trying to protect against terrorists. The idea that in the Patriot Act the government can go into our own library here, any library in the whole country to find out what books people are taking out -- come off it. We have more things to do, better things to do than that. I fear desperately that if the terrorists attack again this summer, this fall before the election -- if there's a dirty bomb in the Holland Tunnel, the devastation will be heart-wrenching, and John Kerry will say, "I'm 100 percent behind the president." And bye-bye to a lot of human values that have made this country really great. That's following your fears, not being led by your values. That's an awfully, awfully important thing and, of course, religiously it's very important. The Scripture says, "Perfect love casts out fear."
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