Category Archives: History

The United States vs. Democracy: A Sad Anniversary

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320px-PinochetKissingerThe anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center overshadowed an anniversary that deserves our attention. On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet led a coup in Chile. Ousting democratically-elected President Salvador Allende, Pinochet installed a totalitarian government that led to the “disappearance” of thousands of Chileans. He even went so far as to murder Chilean political enemies in Washington D.C. Yet the U.S. never opposed Pinochet and rarely even criticized him. He remained in power until March 1990.

Henry Kissinger was a strong supporter of Pinochet. When Allende was elected in 1972, Kissinger convinced Nixon to use covert action to keep Allende from taking office. Their intention was, in their words, to “make the economy scream.” When other efforts failed, the U.S. gave approval for the coup. Here’s info from the Wikipedia page on Pinochet:

While the U.S. tacitly supported the Pinochet government after the 1973 coup, there is no evidence that the US was directly involved in the coup. However, the Church Report concluded that, while the US had not directly participated in the 1973 coup, it had supported an attempted coup in 1970, and had directed money to anti-Allende elements, including possibly terrorist groups, during the period 1970–1973.

Allende’s crime was being a Marxist during the Cold War. He was not aligned with the Soviets and sought to work with Washington. But he had been democratically elected, and that was Washington’s fear: democracy. If the U.S. didn’t intervene, they feared that other Marxists would come to power, not by revolution but through elections.

I won’t go into the whole story, but it’s history that we should remember. It was a time when the U.S. opposed things that it claims to support (like open elections and human rights) and supported the very things we accuse our enemies of (totalitarianism, terrorism, corruption).

40 years. That’s not that long, but it is at the same time. Chile has done much to come to grips with its complicity in those dark times. Seems like its time for the U.S. government to do more than just declassify the documents that show its guilt.

Columbus Day

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Today is when many celebrate Columbus Day. Originally October 12, it has come to be observed on the second Monday of October. In some places. Observance varies widely, even within the United States. Hawaii calls it Discovery Day, recognizing that they owe their roots more to Polynesians than to Europeans. South Dakota celebrates Native American Day, and a number of localities in the U.S. have proclaimed it Indigenous People’s Day.

In Latin America, it’s principally called “Día de la Raza” (Day of the Race) celebrating the influence of Spanish culture on the region. In Spain it’s been celebrated as Día de la Hispanidad (Hispanic Day), although the official name now is Fiesta Nacional (National Holiday).

It’s a controversial day, largely due to changing views toward colonialism. Whereas the traditional European view that their colonizing “civilized” the world has long held sway, there has been a growing awareness that colonization was of much more value to the Europeans than to their colonial subjects.

As many science fiction movies have shown, it’s a complicated thing to try and go back and evaluate what might have happened had history been different. But a lot of people wonder what the world would look like today had Columbus been content to sail east to get to India.

Airbrushed history

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We used to call it airbrushing. Today people would talk about Photoshopping. Images can be altered via mechanical or digital means, changing the entire look. Retouched photos can make people disappear completely from certain photos or insert them “magically” into others.

A good example are the photos we see on magazine covers. Everyone seems to have radiant, unblemished skin. That’s the magic of retouching photos. Women try to achieve the same effect through makeup. When we don’t like the way something looks, we try to change it.

Some people prefer their history to be airbrushed. Or Photoshopped. In the Stalin era, Russians were experts at this, removing people from historical photos when those people fell out of favor.

In school, we’re taught a retouched version of history, where blemishes are covered over and virtues are exaggerated. This isn’t unique to the U.S., of course. I’m fairly certain that every country does that. We even do it in Sunday School!

Problem is, many of us want to hold on to that telling of history. If someone challenges it, they are just “America bashing.” Any attempt to look at the original, un-retouched history is viewed with suspicion. Why not just accept the telling that makes us all feel good?

Richard Hughes wrote a book called Myths America Lives By. It was an attempt to lift the veneer of retouched history and view the world more as it really is. He looks at myths like America as a chosen nation, America as an innocent nation, America as the millennial nation. It’s a good attempt to reverse the airbrushing.

We need to do that. The perpetuation of a false view of the United States is one of the main reasons the church cannot seem to find her own identity in this country. It’s a principal cause of the conflation of church and state. As long as we see this country as some sort of extension of the Kingdom of God, we will continue to confuse service to country with service to our Lord.

Dare we take a hard look at who we are and who we’ve been?

Do we have a history?

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Amphitheater_gateDo we have a history outside that recorded in the Bible? Are we not direct spiritual heirs of the first century church? When we base everything we do on the Bible, what does it matter what others have said and done before us? Certainly that’s a valid question, don’t you think? Can a truly biblical church have a history outside of the Bible?

To answer that question, I think we have to do some comparisons, holding up our church today next to what we see in the New Testament. First off, we gratefully see that, in their essence, they are the same. Same God, same Lord, same Spirit, same faith, same hope, same baptism… same body, which is the church of our Lord.

But as we look, we notice some other things. We find many things in our church that are not in the New Testament. Now before anybody gets upset over that remark, let me hasten to make a clarification. There is a difference between unbiblical and antibiblical. The most obvious example is the Bible itself. Nobody in the Bible carried a Bible! (nor does the word “Bible” appear in Scripture) In fact, it would be many centuries until common Christians had anything resembling what we have today as the Bible. Yet who would argue that owning a Bible goes against biblical principles? The fact that we do some things that weren’t done in Bible times shouldn’t upset us.

In the present day, we meet on Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening. We have Bible classes on Sunday morning and Wednesday evening, but not Sunday evening. This is a common pattern in the churches of Christ today, yet it isn’t found in the Bible. Where did it come from? When you visit different churches of Christ, you hear many of the same songs being sung. Did these come from the Bible or somewhere else? Most of our buildings have a large auditorium with pews (or seats), a communion table and a pulpit or pulpit area. Why the similarities? How did all these congregations come to do so many things the same when those things aren’t found in Scripture?

Now that you see my point, you can probably think of a lot of examples. These are good things, and it is fine to have them. Don’t get me wrong. All I’m saying is that we would not have so many of these incidental things in common unless we had a common history. The coincidence would just be too great. (I wrote a post a while back called Signs that your congregation is part of a bigger history)

One reason that we study Restoration History is to help us differentiate between things we do because they are explicitly taught in the Scriptures and things we do from expediency. The church fell into apostasy long ago because people didn’t know the difference between church traditions and what the Bible taught. We must not commit that same error!

We study church history to honor the men and women who went before us. As has been said, we are where we are because we stand on the shoulders of previous generations. It is a sign of arrogance to think we have nothing to learn from the men and women who went before us. Their voices can help us break free from the tyranny of the here and now to hear the eternal voice of the never-changing God.

Another reason to study history is to try and learn from the mistakes of the past. George Santayana once said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” (Aldous Huxley quipped that the most important thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history!) Our heritage has suffered numerous divisions over the years. We have also been slow to react to some issues, like slavery and civil rights. We can learn from these mistakes and others and avoid their repetition.

We must never deify those that went before us, yet we ignore these men to our own detriment. They were men, fallible men, but their insights and example can aid us in our Christian walk.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (Hebrews 12:1)