This is a cause for gratefulness to God; so many articles and editorials ring true today. For example, we advocated creation care at the outset of the modern environmental movement, decades before climate change became a national conversation. Note the April 23, 1971, editorial: After arguing biblically that “to fail to respect life and all other environmental resources is to demean creation and to violate biblical principles of stewardship,” the editorial concludes with a bracing word...
There are also moments that make an editor in chief wince. Nine (mostly anti-communist) articles by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who we later learned seriously abused his power, especially in his underhanded attempts to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. and derail the civil rights movement.
And on the civil rights movement, our track record is checkered at best.
Clearly, we were naïve about the ugly realities of segregation, and how little it was or could be realistically “directed by a Christian conscience.” In that era, we consistently argued that racism would never end without the spiritual transformation of each individual’s heart. That was and remains true enough. But we were completely ignorant about the nature and stubbornness of structural injustice. We worried how “forced integration” would impinge upon the freedom of individuals (mostly, the freedom of whites) without recognizing that segregation already denied freedom to millions of African Americans. Continue....
-- Mark Galli
I must say, I appreciate the reflection, candor, honesty, and confession this represents. An exercise we perhaps all could benefit from doing collectively and individually.
