Books, Faith, World & More

In a World of Power and Domination

Reviews of A People’s History of the United States, The Powers That Be, and Honest Patriots

Daniel Hertzler

A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. (Harper Perennial, 2005).

The Powers That Be, by Walter Wink. Augsburg Fortress, 1998.

Honest Patriots, by Donald W. Shriver Jr. Oxford University Press, 2005.

The interpretation of history is in the mind of the historian. The history we have too often received has been history from “above.” When I was in grade school, images of Washington and Lincoln dominated the room. Historians seem fascinated by kings and generals, wars, and other conflicts.

In A People’s History, Howard Zinn has deliberately looked for what can be discovered about ordinary people. He reveals his bias early in the book: He will represent the victims rather than the oppressors. “I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Johnson as seen by the Cherokees.” Not, as he acknowledges, that the lines of opposition are necessarily clear. “In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far human history has consisted only of short runs) the victims themselves, desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims” (10).

Donald W. Shriver has a similar concern. Indeed he quotes Zinn a number of times. However, the burden of his presentation is to show how countries deal with negative memories. This is illustrated by his subtitle, Loving a Country Enough to Remember It’s Misdeeds. Shriver is an ethicist and president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary in New York, so his presentation has theological overtones which Zinn’s lacks. However I find Wink dealing more incisively with the issues between church and state.

Zinn, who is a veteran of World War II, does not glorify war. He shows that from the beginning of the U.S. it has been the task of the elites who own the property to persuade the lower classes to go out as soldiers and protect the property of the elites. “The rich, it turns out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes; the poor had to serve” (75).

Zinn’s book provides an extensive list of suppression by the rich in their efforts to retain their riches and exploit opportunities. The account begins with the economic status of some of the Founding Fathers. “George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on” (85).

What more can be said? Quite a bit. The Mexican War, Zinn observes, “was a war of the American elite against the Mexican elite, each side exhorting, using, killing its own population as well as the other” (166). He describes the development of modern American corporations, highlighting the machinations of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. “And so it went, in industry after industry—shrewd, efficient business men building empires, choking out competition, maintaining high prices, keeping wages low, using government subsidies” (257).

The beginning of American empire is illustrated by an account of William McKinley, the pious president called upon to decide whether to take over the Philippines after Spain had been defeated in the Spanish-American War. Zinn reports, “As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision.” According to the story, “I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night.” The answer finally came that we should “take them all and educate the Filipinos and Christianize them.”

Zinn comments that “The Filipinos did not get the same message from God. . . . It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion” (312-313).

World War I, as Zinn recounts it, was another case of ordinary persons doing the dirty work on behalf of the upper class. “Ten million were to die on the battlefield; 20 million were to die of hunger and disease related to the war. And no one since that day has been able to show that the war brought any gain for humanity that would be worth one human life” (359).

He describes some of the tensions caused by U.S. participation in this war. Among those against the war was Eugene Debs, a Socialist leader who “was arrested for violating the Espionage Act.” Zinn reports that some 900 persons were imprisoned for violating this act (367-368).

I remember that some Mennonite leaders were harassed for opposition to the war as described by James Juhnke in Vision, Doctrine, War (Herald Press, 1989). Among them was Bishop Aaron Loucks, who had visited Mennonite draftees and encouraged them not to accept noncombatant work. “Although the Justice department and camp authorities wanted to prosecute Loucks, the War department let him off with a stern warning. In Frederick Keppel’s ironic words, the warning ‘put the fear of God into him’” (239).

Following the war and into the 1920s, “prosperity was concentrated at the top” (382). Throughout and following World War II much the same prevailed. Although some of us can remember a time after this war when the workingman could support a family on his income, “By the end of the Reagan years the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States had grown dramatically” (581). The unhappy litany of the rich against the poor continues. Zinn observes that “in 1998, one of every three working-class people in the United States had jobs paying at or below the federal poverty level” (662).

In an “Afterword,” Zinn comments, “What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor—inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own.” He wonders also “how foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own” (685).

This is about as close as Zinn comes to a theological statement. Throughout the book I found myself saying “Yes, yes” over and over but not feeling completely satisfied because of the seeming lack of a theological perspective. So I’m including here Walter Wink’s The Powers That Be. At 200 pages it is introduced as “in large part a digest of the third volume of my trilogy on the Powers” (iv). I also have that larger book on my shelf, but the digest is easier to deal with.

As a theologian, Wink offers a spiritual interpretation of political structures, giving those of us who have aspired to worship God instead of the state a place to stand. I include Wink’s book in this review with an apology because I used it once before (DreamSeeker, Winter 2005) in connection with two books on consumerism which I perceived needed the addition of Wink’s perspective. What follows here is a more thorough presentation of Wink’s thesis than appeared earlier.

Wink points out that the Powers That Be are necessary. They are the functioning entities of our society. “They are the systems themselves, the institutions and structures that weave society into an intricate fabric of power and relationships. . . . We could do nothing without them. Who wants to be without timely mail delivery or well-maintained roads? But the Powers are also the source of unmitigated evils” (1). It is evil aspects of the Powers which Zinn has documented.

Wink asserts that “Temporally the Powers were created, they are fallen, and they shall be redeemed. . . . Conservatives stress the first, revolutionaries the second, reformers the third. The Christian is expected to hold together all three” (32). As Christians we are called upon not to demonize those who do evil but to ask them to follow the ideals which they have already professed. However, too often we will find them enmeshed in “The Domination System.”

This system “is characterized by unjust economic relations, oppressive political relations, biased race relations, patriarchal gender relations, hierarchical power relations, and the use of violence to maintain them all” (39). The system, Wink observes, is supported by “the Myth of Redemptive Violence. It enshrines the belief that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right.” This is also, Wink says, “the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society” (42).

Wink finds this myth articulated in the creation myth of the ancient Babylonians. Today, he says, it predominates in children’s cartoons as well as in “comics, video and computer games, and movies. But we also encounter it in the media, in sports, in nationalism, in militarism, in foreign policy, in televangelism, in the religious right, and in self-styled militia groups” (49).

This theological perspective helps to interpret the repressions described in Zinn’s book. As Wink puts it, this myth “uses the traditions, rites, customs, and symbols of Christianity to enhance both the power of a select wealthy minority and the goals of the nation narrowly defined.” He wonders which would cause a bigger disturbance: “removing the American flag from your church sanctuary or removing the cross” (59)?

To this point Wink has illuminated issues which Zinn describes. Beginning with chapter 3, “Jesus’ Answer to Domination,” he proposes a Christian response. In his life, teachings, and personal sacrifice, Jesus challenged the Domination System. “The ‘Christus Victor’ (‘Christ is Victor’) theory of the atonement proclaimed release of the captives to those who had formerly been deluded and enslaved by the Domination System. And it portrayed Jesus as set against that system with all his might” (89).

However, Wink observes that after it became official under Constantine, “The church no longer saw the demonic as lodged in the empire, but in the empire’s enemies” (90). Augustine also helped things along by his articulation of the just war theory. “Christians ever since have been justifying wars fought for nothing more than national interest as ‘just’”(99). So in chapters 5 to 9 Wink considers what alternatives Christians may have to the accepted forms of national violence.

He considers Jesus’ teaching recorded in Matthew 5, which suggests “take the law and push into the point of absurdity” (110). He includes a chapter on nonviolence and warns that “if we’re to make nonviolence effective, we will have to be as willing to suffer and be killed as soldiers in battle” (118).

In chapter 8 “But What If . . . ?” he observes that “The vast number of Christians reject nonviolence not only because of confusion about its biblical foundations, but because there are too many situations where they can’t conceive of its working” (145). So he includes a number of examples of people confronted by violence who responded nonviolently and survived.

In chapter 10 he considers “Prayer and the Powers” and observes that prayer needs to accompany social action. “We must discern not only the outer, political manifestations of the Powers, but also their inner spirituality, and lift the Powers, inner and outer, to God for transformation. Otherwise we change only the shell and leave the spirit intact” (197).

This is a tall order and puts the whole enterprise on a level not anticipated by Zinn’s book. It also offers an alternative to the prevailing theology in our culture. Many theologians still seem inclined to support the idea of a just war and to divide between a good war and a bad war.

It appears that this prevailing theology is represented by Donald W. Shriver’s Honest Patriots, but this is nevertheless a remarkable book. Anyone who teaches European, African, or American history should by all means consult it. Shriver has examined the cases of three countries in terms of how they have dealt with the memories of past “misdeeds.” He is particularly impressed by the way German historians have illuminated the Holocaust through museums and history books for high school students. He notices “the candor, realism and comprehensiveness of accounts for reading by German youth” (57).

As for South Africa, we would not equate apartheid with the Holocaust. Also, numbers of the perpetrators are still at large in the country. As Shriver observes, “Three-centuries-old scars of colonialism and apartheid will litter South African landscape and memory for a long time” (69). He finds that the various efforts urging South Africans to work toward reconciliation have invited people to join a pilgrimage. Some are ready to join and some are not. But it is an example for others to consider in undertaking their own programs to deal with a troubled past.

Then Shriver comes to the U.S., in relation to which he has one chapter regarding slavery and the African-Americans and another on repressions of the Native Americans. How shall these past misdeeds be recounted and interpreted? He begins with his own childhood experience growing up in Virginia, where his family employed a maid at $10 for a five-and-a-half-day week. “I do not remember ever asking my father ‘Is $10 a week enough to live on?’” (129).

He describes the efforts of three communities as well as the state of Oregon to deal with issues of racism in their past. Also he finds a remarkable textbook in The American Nation by Paul Boyer, in which “the hooks to learning are so varied, colorful and inviting the casual reviewer will know immediately that the book demands a lot of students but even more of teachers” (173).

For Native Americans the issues are not the same and seemingly more difficult to “rectify.” Shriver reviews the sad story of mistreatment and failed treaties, of how the Indians were repeatedly pressed to leave their lands. So today “Every contemporary American lives in places where once lived members of one or another of the 550 Indian nations who we know populated the current bounds of the United States” (210).

Europeans and Native Americans had contrasting views on land. The Europeans assumed that land could be bought and sold. The Native Americans saw it differently. “Once a metal pot was bought or sold, Indians knew that the seller had no right of arbitrary repossession. But land was different. It was home. It was the place where the ancestors had lived from time immemorial, and where they were buried” (225).

One interesting datum Shriver includes is that the Native Americans have not gone away. “Their continent-wide population had shrunk drastically by 1900 (to 237,000) from a probable 7 million in 1492. The figure is now about 2 million” (230). Among the signs of progress Shriver notes is a “National Museum of the American Indian on the mall in Washington D.C.” (260).

The final chapter of Shriver’s book is entitled “Being Human While Being American.” There he provides his own perspective on the issues he raises. I find that he represents a chastened Calvinism of one branch of the established U.S. Protestant church. He has repeatedly quoted Reinhold Niebuhr—who was good at describing moral issues but seemed hesitant to propose radical Christian responses.

I find Walter Wink more helpful in sorting out the issues. It seems that Wink supports the Anabaptist understanding that there is a church and state and the church people need to have a clear view of the spiritual dimension of political realities and approach them spiritually first. Only then can we know how to respond to the repressive tendencies of power politics.

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, is an editor, writer, and chair of the elders, Scottdale Mennonite Church.