Letters to the Editor

Women’s Suffrage: The 75th Anniversary of Women’s Right to Vote 
By Ross Coggins

It’s hard to believe: On August 26—just 75 years ago—perhaps within the lifetime of your grandmother, or your mother or even yourself—the power of the ballot was still for men only. The fate of a nation was entrusted to half of its citizenry. But on that date one of the most profound changes in American history occurred: the 19th Amendment to the Constitution took effect and women at last had the right to vote.

Before the anniversary of that momentous event again passes unnoticed this year, one might ponder this question: How could women have been denied such a fundamental role for the first 144 years of our nationhood? Why was something so obviously right achieved only after decades of passionate protest, civil disobedience, and old-fashioned, knock-down, family-dividing, church-splitting, liberal-versus-conservative debate?
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Christian Ethics: From the Blue Point of the Flame 
A Conversation with Tony Campolo

Q. Tony, where did you get your social conscience?
A. This is going to sound very unimpressive, but as a kid I got converted and just read the Bible. I think that the problem with most of us is that we grow up in a church that teaches us to read into the Bible instead of growing up in a church that just says read the Bible. When you read the Bible and don’t read into it, you will find that the Bible calls people every bit as much to champion social justice as it calls people to individually express love.
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Virtues and Values: The Road Less Traveled Jeremiah 6:16 (RSV) 
By Foy Valentine

Virtue is purity, strength, valor, courage, uprightness of heart, integrity of soul, virility of spirit.

Values are those basic qualities commonly accepted among civilized people as constituting an irreducible minimum by which folks ought to live—anywhere, everywhere, anytime, all the time.

Virtues and values are of great importance to everybody. They are of special importance to Christians. The two are virtually synonymous, essentially the same thing. Both are concerned about our personal walk with the Lord “in paths of righteousness” and with our social behavior in morally responsible ways.

The cardinal virtues, the primary values, deserve far more attention than the people of God have been giving them in recent times. They may be understood as personal qualities with social applications and as social fruits with personal roots. These two dimensions, the personal and the social, need to be kept equally in focus, for one without the other is an oxymoron—incongruous, contradictory, impossible.
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There Is Hope 
By Will Campbell

When I was going to school on the G.I. Bill of Rights, right after the Spanish-American War, they told me that the first few minutes of any address or sermon should be given over to sheer foolishness and nonsense. I reckon John Seigenthaler’s introduction has pretty well covered that so we can proceed to the subject at hand. Whatever that subject may be. Actually, John, I was born in New York City. In the Soho district. My mother was a dancer at Radio City Music Hall with the Rockettes. My father was with the Secret Service guarding Mr. Garfield, until that terrible accident. Then we moved to Mississippi and started picking cotton for a living. And if you’re buying all that I have some choice beachfront property in the Smoky Mountains you might be interested in.

Some of you asked about my walking cane. I’m always glad because that allows me to tell one of my favorite stories. Something that really happened, though perhaps I should be ashamed to tell it. The cane was made for me by a neighbor who was what we would call illiterate. But he knew something abut aesthetics; knew what was pretty; what really, finally mattered. He tore down an old abandoned barn many years ago and discovered that some of the rotting timbers were made of wild cherry. He put them aside and when he was old he made things that were at once beautiful and useful for those he loved. Fortunately, I was one of them. It is, I think, a fine metaphor for the Gospel—taking something rotten and making something beautiful of it.
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Updated Monday, November 26, 2001

NOTE: the footnoting is in error and must be corrected
Countering the Radical Religious Right 
By John Leland Berg

What is the Radical Religious Right? Who are these people and what are they about?

Organized religion historically has been involved significantly in the American political process. Early twentieth century American Fundamentalism, although politically conservative, tended to avoid entanglement in party politics. Under the leadership of Fundamentalists like J. Gresham Machen, Frank Norris, and Carl Mclntire, American Fundamentalism limited its political involvement to selected issues such as Prohibition, the teaching of evolution in public schools, and anti-Communist pronouncements. Some Fundamentalists, like Jerry Falwell of the 1960s, attributed the moral decline and civil strife within the United States to the fulfillment of dispensational premillenialist prophecy concerning the end times. In the sixties, these Fundamentalists did not emphasize political involvement because of their professed commitment to winning as many people as possible to Christ prior to Christ’s second coming. In the late 1 970s, however, Fundamentalist Christians were enticed onto the political stage by the then New Political Right, an ultra-conservative highly motivated, politically knowledgeable think tank of ideologues who were in basic agreement with the Republican party.
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Maston Colloquium Statement - Countering the Radical Religious Right

(A statement made by participants in the Maston Colloquium. Their names are affixed, together with those of others who have identified with it. Convened by the Center for Christian Ethics on May 30, 1995, in Dallas, Texas, the Colloquium name honors Dr. T.B. Maston for his pioneering work in Christian ethics as a teacher, writer, and prophet.)

We are a company of American Christians who are committed to the integrity of our churches, the welfare of our country, and the strengthening of the moral fiber of our people.
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The Christian Coalitions “Contract With the American Family” - An Analysis 
By Steve Watkins 

In the middle of May, 1995, the Christian Coalition, the brainchild of TV religionist Pat Robertson, introduced with much fanfare its “Contract With the American Family” for consideration by the 1995 Congress. The Coalition declared that the adoption of this Contract would stabilize American society and reintroduce morality and virtue to a society seemingly out of control.

This analysis of certain points in the “Contract With the American Family” attempts to discover what type of morality and virtue is being promoted by the Christian Coalition, and discern whether that morality possesses any kinship to the morality and virtue espoused by the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
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