The Lesson of Watergate

This article appeared in the January 1974 issue of the Post American, the predecessor to Sojourners.

One year after the biggest electoral landslide in American history, most Americans would now agree that the present “law and order” administration is the most lawless on record. The revelations of Watergate expose a government who operational principles are deceit, corruption, and manipulation. Illegal break-ins and wiretaps, political espionage and sabotage, a special secret police group called “plumbers,” payoffs and illegal money “deals” and contributions, private enrichment from public office, cover-ups and bribes, and other “White House horrors” have shocked and disillusioned the American people.

Top White House aids, close presidential associates, former cabinet members and campaign officials are forced to leave office and face grand jury hearings and indictments. The Vice President resigns to avoid criminal prosecution. A Special Prosecutor is fired by the President for getting too close and the third Attorney General in two years resigns as does his deputy. Secret tapes are first withheld by the President, then released after a court order but with some mysteriously “missing” and others with crucial sections somehow “erased,” or otherwise “inaudible.”

Presidential knowledge and involvement is believed by most of the public according to the polls. ‘Major newspapers, magazines, citizens groups, congressmen and senators of both parties and even George Meany of the AFL-CIO call for the impeachment or resignation of the President. Many fear that the very integrity and viability of the political system itself is at stake.

Many American Christians, who had come to closely identify with American political and economic power and prestige and with this administration in particular, feel confused, angered, betrayed.

The most perceptive response I have heard to the whole Watergate affair was from Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers to the public. When told of the break-in at his psychiatrists office carried out by officials of the Nixon administration, he replied, “I wish I could say that I was surprised.”

If there is one response that the Christian community should not have had to this whole sordid affair, it was to be surprised. But unfortunately most were.

Our biblical theology alone should have given us a more realistic and critical view of the state and its institutions. We should have been alert to the dangers of close identification and uncritical allegiance with governmental power. Our recent history should have demonstrated to us the growing abuse and injustice of the political and economic institutions of American society.

The lawlessness, the abuse of human life and values, the structured injustice, the growing totalitarianism of American life were present in this administration and in this nation long before Watergate. This Watergate administration was the same one that pulverized the nations of Indochina while upholding a brutal military dictatorship that continues to exist only because of U.S. support. The slaughter of a million Indochinese, the funding of terror and torture, the violation of the constitution and of civil rights, the impounding of appropriated federal money, the stifling of dissent to the extent of ignoring murder at Kent and Jackson State, was all present before we knew of the revelations of Watergate. However, the bill of particulars against the President in any forthcoming impeachment resolution will probably contain only items from the Watergate revelations.

The seriousness and depth of our present situation was well-articulated in a lonely and relatively unnoticed call for impeachment issued a full two years ago before any of the Watergate revelations. This call now seems quite prophetic in the midst of the many impeachment demands which all strike me as uninspiring, late, and lacking in moral credibility. The earlier call was issued by a brother and a Contributing Editor of ours, William Stringfellow.

In that timely and unheeded call he listed the many offenses, of the president and said:

Let it be emphatic that none of this has anything to do categorically with partisanship--with stereotypical party politics--with the Republican vs. Democratic thing. That has long since been surpassed by events. In those events, concentrated so much in the war, we ought by now to have learned something. We ought to have learned that the issue is not the war, or that the issue is no longer the war. The war has become the grotesque symptom of the most rudimentary social issue: whether authority is subject to law, whether incumbency validates authority or whether authority can still be required to function Constitutionally, whether, in short, the President is accountable.

The most important thing which could result from the Watergate episode is not the impeachment of the President. Rather it would be the hope of lessons learned by the church about its responsibilities, about its mission in this society. Watergate should be viewed as a blessing in that it brought the truth to light. If revelations help us to rediscover our biblical roots and to re-examine our recent history it might serve to help the church be more obedient to its calling.

A very hopeful sign which pointed to that possibility occurred at a recent gathering of 50 evangelical leaders over the Thanksgiving Weekend. The Chicago Sun Times refereed to the event as a “Historic Workshop” and suspected that it might ultimately be regarded as the most important church-related event of 1973. Those of us who were gathered there represented a wide spectrum of evangelical leadership, black and white, young and old, male and female, but shared a common spirit and commitment to the priorities of discipleship and the urgent need for an obedient and prophetic church. An important statement was issued by the group, since refereed to as the Chicago Declaration. Signed by both established and radical evangelicals, black, Latin, and women leaders, peace church and denominational leadership, it has been very favorably responded to by the major evangelical publications and growing numbers of people. The workshop and the declaration reflect the new stirrings and directions in the evangelical church. New movements toward costly discipleship and social justice have been occurring. With the decline of the New Left and other movements for social change present in the sixties, along with the spreading radical Christian consciousness, it is highly probable that the strongest thrusts toward prophetic witness and social justice may well spring from those whose faith is Christ-centered and hold an unapologetic biblical faith. More on that prospect in future issues of the Post American. Here is a complete text of the declaration.

A Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern

As evangelical Christians committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and the full authority of the Word of God, we affirm that God lays total claim upon the lives of his people. We cannot, therefore, separate our lives in Christ from the situation in which God has placed us in the United States and the world.

We confess that we have not acknowledged the complete claims of God on our lives.

We acknowledge that God requires love. But we have not demonstrated the love of God to those suffering social abuses.

We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and the oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. We deplore the historic involvement of the church in America with racism and the conspicuous responsibility of the evangelical community for perpetuating the personal attitudes and institutional structures that have divided the body of Christ along color lines. Further, we have failed to condemn the exploitation of racism at home and abroad by our economic system.

We affirm that God abounds in mercy and that he forgives all who repent and turn from their sins. So we call our fellow evangelical Christians to demonstrate repentance in a Christian discipleship that confronts that social and political injustice of our nation.

We must attack the materialism of our culture and the maldistribution of the nation’s wealth and services. We recognize that as a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and promote more just acquisition and distribution of the world’s resources.

We acknowledge our Christian responsibilities of citizenship. Therefore, we must challenge the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might--a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad. We must resist the temptation to make the nation and its institutions objects of near-religious loyalty.

We acknowledge that we have encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity. So we call both men and women to mutual submission and active discipleship.

We proclaim no new gospel, but the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who, through the power of the Holy Spirit, frees people from sin so that they might praise God through works of righteousness.

By this declaration, we endorse no political ideology or party, but call our nation’s leaders and people to that righteousness which exalts a nation.

We make this declaration in the biblical hope that Christ coming to consummate the Kingdom and we accept his claim on our total discipleship till He comes.

(Adopted 25 November 1973, Chicago, Illinois)

Original Signers of a Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern

John F Alexander
Mark Hatfield
Clark Pinnock
Joseph Bayly
Carl F H Henry
Wyn Wright Potter
Ruth L Bentley
Paul Henry
Ron Potter
William Bentley
Clarence Hilliard
Bernard Ramm
Dale Brown
Walden Howard
Paul Rees
James C Cross
Rufus Jones
Boyd Reese
Donald Dayton
Robert Tad Lehe
Joe Roos
Roger Dewey
William Leslie
James Robert Ross
James Dunn
C T McIntyre
Eunice Schatz
Dan Ebersole
Wes Michaelson
Ronald Sider
Donna Simons
Warren C Falcon
Stephen Mott
Lewis Smedes
Frank Gaebelein
Richard Mouw
Foy Valentine
Sharon Gallagher
F Burton Nelson
Marlin Van Elderen
Theodore E Gannon
William Pannell
Jim Wallis
Art Gish
John Perkins
Robert Webber
Vernon Grounds
William Peterson
Merold Westphal
Nancy Hardesty
Richard Pierard