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PARTISAN REVIEW
two things: Either national policy can be defended as good or
just without theological sanctions or dogmas, in which case the
interposition of religion obscures issues: or the defense presup–
poses religious dogmas, in which case, to countenance a different
national policy, is to betray
religious
dogma. The German Bishops
who admonished the Catholic soldiers in a Pastoral Letter to give
their lives
"in obedience to the Fuehrer"
should have been de–
nounced as bad Catholics. Before Catholics, Protestants and Jews
urge the acceptance of their dogmas as necessary preconditions
for intelligent belief in democracy and anti-Hitlerism, let them
convert their own churches to democracy, and denounce religious
neutrality before Hitlerism for what it is, connivance with the
enemy. This is their sector of the battle. But, better still, let them
take their theology out of politics.
On the very question of the war itself the Protestant Churches
of America are split wide open although this is somewhat con–
cealed by the unanimity of interest in problems of post-war re–
construction. Yet no matter with what voice the Churches speak
on the issues of the day, they do so not as other associations of
citizens who must face demands of empirical evidence, but as
guardians of a revelation which gives them unique knowledge of
man and his destiny.
Religion can escape showing its credentials concerning the
inspiration of its knowledge but not concerning its validity. For
the reliability of any knowledge is tested in the necessities of
intelligent action. That test, together with the varying counsel
of the Churches on specific social policies, is sufficient to indicate
that there is no unique religious knowledge or religious guidance.
When Church pronouncements about the nature of the world are
not irrelevant or clearly false, they can be more plausibly de–
rived from positions that Churches usually characterize as un–
believing. When the claims to unique knowledge are exploded,
the last resort of religionists is the assertion that religious beliefs,
and only religious beliefs, can supply that dynamic faith without
which secular defence of the good society is ineffectual, unable
to implement its own humanist ideals.
Faith, Sin, and Good Sense
The defense of religious faith takes many forms. Most of
them are variations on the theme that if the beliefs of faith were
