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their influence remains disorganized, diffused, and feeble, and by de
fault they permit other better-organized and more active groups to
dominate the government and establish the policies by which the lives
of all the citizens are regulated. By their inaction they create a low
pressure area into which other pressures soon move. Through their
failure to use their political strength in the cause of social justice,
they contribute to the spread of injustice. Because of their failure to
organize their strength and transform the existing political institutions
which have become corrupt, they share the responsibility for the
perpetuation of the corruption against which they inveigh.
t h e y
f e a r
c o n t r o v e r s y
.
Protestants—along with many others
—sometimes fail to fulfill their political obligations because they fear
controversy and its possible penalties. This fear is not limited to
Protestants, of course, nor is it restricted to the area of political
controversy. Insofar as the latter is concerned, however, it represents
a failure to recognize how dependent our democratic form of gov
ernment is upon free and vigorous debate on issues of vital concern.
Moreover, it is a peculiarly inconsistent attitude for Protestants to
hold in view of their belief in the priesthood of all believers. The
vitality of both democracy and Protestantism depends upon the
freedom of men to discuss those matters about which there are dis
agreements and upon the faith that out of this process there will
emerge a fuller conception of truth than any one person or group
can apprehend alone.
Recently, some parts of the South have hailed the prospective
development of a genuine two-party system, because it is recognized
that this would strengthen the democratic process by encouraging
debate and providing real issues to be decided in elections. But it
now seems doubtful that a genuine two-party system will come into
being in the near future. The pressures toward conformity are of
many types: political, economic, social, religious. They operate upon
the liberal press, upon teachers in the public schools, upon the clergy,
upon legislators, and upon employers. They operate upon whites and
Negroes. No one is free from them. Fear of opposition—from which
stem efforts to restrict freedom of speech, press, and pulpit—and
fear of the penalties which nonconformity might bring represent two
of the greatest obstacles to the exercise of genuine political re
sponsibility in the South today; and they no doubt have their parallels
in every other section of the country.
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Biblical Faith and Social Ethics