Part of the continuing conversation on the faith journey
with the members and friends of
First Congregational Church of Houston
The Bible is, in parts, a very
violent book, especially the Old Testament. One of the most potent
arguments against the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, in
my mind, is the bloodthirsty commands put in the mouth of God.
But, the Bible understood as the evolving human understanding
of the creative force of the universe from a God of violence and
war to a God of compassion and love makes the early passages understandable.
By the time we get to Jesus, a very different view of violence
is found. We are told to love our enemies and to forgive them.
We are told to be peacemakers. One incident in which Jesus condemns
violence is while he is being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Jesus was still speaking, when Judas the betrayer came up.
He was one of the twelve disciples, and a large mob armed with
swords and clubs was with him. They had been sent by the chief
priests and the nation's leaders. Judas had told them ahead of
time, "Arrest the man I greet with a kiss."
Judas walked right up to Jesus and said, "Hello , teacher."
Then Judas kissed him.
Jesus replied, "My friend, why are you here?"
The men grabbed Jesus and arrested him. One of Jesus' followers
pulled out a sword. He stuck the servant of the high priest and
cut off his ear.
But Jesus told him, "Put your sword away. Anyone who lives
by fighting will die by fighting. Don't you know that I could
ask my Father, and right away he would send me more than twelve
armies of angels? But then, how could the words of scripture come
true, which say that this must happen?"
Jesus said to the mob, "Why do you come with swords and clubs
to arrest me like a criminal? Day after day I sat and taught in
the temple, and you didn't arrest me. But all this happened, so
that what the prophets wrote would come true."
All of Jesus' disciples left him and ran away.
Matthew 26:47-56 (CEV)
Anyone who lives by fighting will die by fighting (who lives
by the sword will die by the sword). Today, I want to explore
with you the issue of violence in our national life, and the Christian
response to it.
Each year the Fourth of July causes me to pull out my large dogeared
college reference book, Documents of American History1 and reread the Declaration
of Independence. Three things always strike me.
First, I find the beginning two paragraphs of the document truly
inspirational, and therein are those famous words:
We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness."
Next, I am always startled by
how radically dangerous that Declaration is to any established
order. For example, what do these words convey to today's militias
who see the U.S. government as the enemy?
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safely andHappiness."2
Finally, I am always humbled
by what these men of privilege and substancewere willing to do
in the name of freedom: to place their names on a document which
was so dangerous to each of them personally:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance
on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to
each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
That was not an idle pledge since, if the British had
won the war, people like Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and
Thomas Jefferson would certainly have lost their fortunes, most
likely their lives, and be obscure footnotes in history. After
reading these words, I then pause and wonder if I would have signed
this document knowing the probable consequences of failure.
Thomas Jefferson, the primary (but not the only) drafter of the
Declaration of Independence, died on the fiftieth anniversary
of the Declaration (4 July 1826 and just a few hours earlier on
that same day as did John Adams, his erstwhile political enemy).
The last decade of Thomas Jefferson's life was not a happy time,
for financial reverses brought him to bankruptcy. Even more, he
became quite depressed as he viewed the sad state of the American
nation.
The American public, also, has a fairly dismal view of the Republic
today.
Daniel Yankelovich, chairman and founder of the public opinion
research firm carrying his name, gave a keynote address at the
conference, "Religion and the American Family Debate: Deeper
Understandings, New Directions," held at the University of
Chicago (10 September 1996). His paper is an incisive look into
the American psyche, worth reading and rereading. At one point,
Yankelovich writes:
The depth of public disaffection with the present imbalance
is profound. In the United States, public distress about the state
of our social morality has reached nearly universal proportions:
87 percent of the public fear that something is fundamentally
wrong with America's moral condition (up from 76 percent a year
ago). In general a widespread feeling of moral decline has sharply
expanded within the public over the last two years, regardless,
of gender, age, race or geographical area.
And he adds:
I share the public's conviction.
The cause of this sense of moral decline is worth exploring, and
Yankelovich is worth reading. But, it is in another direction
from which I, as a Christian, offer a critique of American life.
I do so through the media of movies and television.
Hollywood's movies and television programs are often referred
to as bubble gum entertainment, that is, their product
is seen as a trivial aspect of our lives and diversionary to real
life. Some strongly disagree with this view and work at effecting
change in what is presented to the public. One such group is the
American Family Association which monthly lists situations and
dialogue in TV programs which have a strong sexual and violent
base. Another example of an attempt to effect programming is the
Southern Baptist Convention boycotting Disney enterprises. These
Christian groups want a society in which the violent and the sexual
is not so persuasively prevalent in our media. Although the two
groups just mentioned are Christian, many others in our society
who would like to see a change.
Personally, I find that more disturbing than the violent and sexual
imagery that flashes before our eyes is the underlying mythology
of our media: its effect on the way we Americans understand the
world and on the way we live out our lives. Frankly, I find it
highly antiChristian.
I first speak of mythology. That may be a strange concept to occupants
of the twentieth century with a scientific world view. But, just
because we have discarded the old Greek and Roman myths and just
because the old biblical myths of a Garden of Eden and a snake
no longer occupy our imaginations, it does not mean that we have
discarded myth.3 A myth is an uncritically
accepted story that tells us how the world works, what is the
source of evil and the means of redemption, and what is deeply
meaningful to human life.4 Myth is the uncritically
accepted story of how things 'work.'
I believe we find this unChristian myth embedded in the Western
and its successors on the screen and TV. Even deeper than the
Western as escape literature, Westerns provide us with a specific
mythologythe myth of redemptive violence.
The Western is thoroughly American and deeply rooted in our history.
James Fenimore Cooper's novels of frontier adventure known as
the Leatherstocking Tales feature Hawkeye, the Westerner who negotiated
the wilderness of upstate New York. He was supplanted by the 19th
century figures of Westerners Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.
Then later in the century, we had Wild Bill Hickok, General George
A. Custer, Jesse James, Doc Holiday and Billy the Kid. So pervasive
are these stories that there is an immediate recognition by everyone
here of who these individuals are.
With this centurylong history in mind, it is not too strange that
the first movie of any complexity was the 1903 "The Great
Train Robbery." One person estimated that Westerns make up
more than a quarter of all the movies produced since.
Why are Westerns so popular? Of course, a large part of the reason
is that the Western serves as escape literature. One person wrote:
Americans love Westerns because we think of ourselves not as
city folks leading tame and mundane lives, but as rugged and daring
men and women packing up and moving out onto the frontier, adventurers
settling and taming the wilderness. The city corrupts and weakens
our spirits. The wide open spaces of the frontier, on the other
hand, give us the elbow room we need, as well as a place to start
over, to be reborn or redeemed. In Westerns we never had to deal
with all the messy constraints and bureaucracy of civilization.
Here was a place were the police never needed to read anyone their
Miranda rights, where defendants never got off on a technicality,
where killersnot juriesgot hung. In Westerns one often didn't
have to worry about the law at all. The circuit judge wasn't due
in town for another six months or the marshal was dead or in the
pay of corrupt ranchers. If there was any real problem, you needed
to solve it yourselfusually by strapping on your sixgun and walking
out into the noonday sun.5
Westerns have supplanted the Biblical and Christian myth of redemptive
suffering with that of redemptive violence. No longer
is evil destroyed by Jesus who submits to his own death, but redemption
takes place in a burst of destructive violence against others.
Westerns present us with a common theme:
there is paradise, a harmonious community;
this paradise is threatened by some monstrous evil, an evil;
with which the community cannot deal, an evil which;
threatens to overwhelm all goodness;
into this evil moves a superhero, selfless and pure and solitary;
a burst of violence eliminates the evil, restores the good; and
the superhero rides into the obscurity
of the sunset.
Think of movie "High Noon"
with Gary Cooper. With the fearful community unable to defend
itself, Gary Cooper kills the killers, and then, although wounded,
disdainfully drops his sheriff's badge into the dust just before
he rides off into the sunset. Or think of "Shane" with
Alan Ladd. Seeking to leave violence behind him, Shane rides into
a valley in which a war between a rancher and the settlers is
about to erupt. Reluctantly, Shane puts on his gun, wipes out
the evil men, and then, wounded, rides off into the sunset.
That `Western' theme of redemptive violence pervades our other
popular movies and television programs as wellextending into foreign
affairs and our explorations of the universe. What half a million
American soldiers could not do in Vietnam, Rambo did all alone.
Or consider "Star Trek." Its creator described it this
way: "The Enterprise IS a cosmic `Mary Worth,' meddling
her way across the galaxy to spread truth, justice, and the
American Way to the far corners of the universe."
The crew of Enterprise acts as a galactic redeemer in episode
after episode often after a burst of violence against the Romulans
(similar to the Vulcans in ability and technological development
but are "highly militaristic, aggressive by nature, ruthless
in warfare, and do not take captives") and the Klingons who
are even worse though less intelligent.6
Or, to see how the Western myth of redemptive violence is transferred
into modern urban life, we have the movie "Death Wish."
The story of Death Wish opens with Paul Kersey and his wife vacationing
in Hawaii. Vacation over, they return to New York and get caught
in irritating stopandgo traffic and miserable winter weather.
The ugliness of nature is reflected in the brutal murder of Kersey's
wife and the brutal rape of his daughterinlaw. His inquirers at
the police station finally end in a statement that the killers
many never be apprehended.
Bitbybit, Kersey begins to take action, eventually roaming the
streets at night with a gun, inviting the attention of hoodlums
whom he begins to kill. He becomes a vigilante. Crime statistics
take a nose dive, and there is an enormous outpouring of sympathy
from the public. On his eleventh killing, Kersey is wounded, identified
by the police, and then is invited by the police to leave town.
The movie closes with Paul Kersey arriving at O'Hare International
Airport. There four Chicago toughs harass a woman. Helping the
woman pick up her parcels, Kersey responds to the obscene gesture
from the retreating figures by aiming his trigger finger at them
with a gleam in his eye. Shane has arrived in yet another desperate,
lawless community that needs redemptive violence.
Such popular movies and TV programs have been called bubble
gum, lacking significance and serious intent, devoid of deep
meaning, pure diversion. I don't believe that is the case. On
the surface, that is the story line. But underlying the story
is the pervasive American myth of redemptive violence.
No wonder Westerns were so popular for
the two decades after World War II. They provided a context for
the ordering of our livesdomestically and externally.
The rigidity of the boundaries separating the saloon girls (even
with hearts of gold) and the schoolmarms, the gunslingers and
sheriffs, cowboys and Indians easily kept sharp borders between
the genders and races at home and friends and foes abroad. Borders
always had to be defended with force; only violence kept chaos
at bay. Only Wyatt Earp in Dodge City or the cavalry's charge
could maintain public order. The United States was the world's
marshal defending democracy in the world, not depending on otherslike
the United Nationsto contain the "demonic force" of
communism. Violence had worked against the Apaches and Comanches,
and General Westmoreland, Robert McManara and others convinced
us that it would work in Latin America and Southeast Asia.
It was not so strange that the new President John F. Kennedy would,
in 1950, take as his theme: the New Frontier.
Much has happened to buffet the mythology of the Western: race
riots at home, extensive and deliberate lying by the government
in the Pentagon Papers, the inability of power to prevail in Vietnam,
feminism, and Native American activists. We discovered that there
were problems with the world's marshal. We found out that our
cause wasn't so true or pure or our history as unblemished. as
we thought. By 1990 "Dances with Wolves" and in 1993
with "Unforgiven,"both Academy Award winnersthe cavalry
and become the bad guys, and the marshal was a villain.
But. it is when we turn to the Gospels, that we get the strongest
critique of this myth of redemptive violence.
The Parables of the Good Samaritan and the Pharisee and tax collector,
for example, ridicule the dividing lines drawn between friend
and foe, saint and sinner. In the parables of the unforgiving
debtor and the prodigal son, it is mercynot a sixgunthat's called
for.
When violence does show up in the gospels, it has none of that
redemptive power attributed to it in Westerns. Instead it is a
brutal weapon of oppression and injustice that crushes the weak
and the powerless. Then, at the climax, twelve legions of angels
are not called in for an OK corral shootout in the garden, but
it is the hero who is hung on a tree between two thieves.
The parables of Jesus undermine our the view of redemptive violence.
More to the point of the Gospel is the poem by Edwin Markham:
He drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a think to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in.
Commager, Henry Steele. Documents of American History.
New York: AppletonCenturyCrofts, 1949. [P]
Greenberg, Paul. "The Fourth of July is the American Idea."
Houston Chronicle, 4 July 1996.
Jewett, Robert and Lawrence, John Shelton. The American Monomyth,
2nd ed. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1988. [STM
E 169.12 J48]
McCormick, Patrick. "Things aren't so great at the OK Corral."
U.S. Catholic, June 1997, pp. 4043.
Yankelovich, Daniel. "Trends in American Cultural Values."
Criterion, Autumn 1996, pp. 29.
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