Who Is the Enemy?
On Sunday, May 27th, 1983, the Wesley (young adult) class of St. John's
discussed the following speech.
WHO IS THE ENEMY?
William Sloane Coffin, Jr.
This address was given at All Souls Unitarian Church in Kansas
City, Missouri, 8 April, 1983, at the Bragg Symposium.
Many of our current leaders are both theologically and politcally
educated. Rev. Immanuel Cleaver is active on the City Council. Rev.
John Danforth completed seminary training as an Episcopalian, then went
to law school, and is now a spiritual servant as a U.S. Senator. Rev.
Jesse Jackson is running for president.
William Sloane Coffin, Jr., was "an elitist who came to question
such principles, a combative young squire who espoused nonviolence, a
boy with an ear for music and language who became a preacher." Born of
a wealthy established family in New York, he originally intended to be-
come a concert pianist. But in World War II, because of his language
skills, he became a liaison officer with the French and later the Rus-
sian armies. Upon completing his degree in government at Yale, he en-
tered Union Theological Seminary. During the Korean War, he was in the
CIA, training anti-Soviet Russians for work inside the Soviet Union.
In time he became chaplain of various universities, eighteen years the
chaplain at Yale University. He was an early organizer in the Peace
Corps. In 1961 he was one of the seven Freedom Riders arrested in
Montgomery, Alabama, protesting local segregation laws. In 1968 he
and Dr. Benjamin Spock were arrested for aiding and abetting draft
resisters. In 1977 he was called to the pulpit of the Riverside Church
in New York City. He organized the Riverside Disarmamant Program.
Dr. Coffin's topic is, "Who Is the Enemy?"
. . . I am sustained a lot by the notion that there is a com-
munity of people in the world who understand what makes the world go
'round. . . . lot of love in their hearts, lots of iron in their spines.
This kind of encouragement keeps us all going when you wake up in the
morning a senseless grain of wheat looking at a millstone. . . .
Let me talk about four enemies.
I. NUCLEAR ARMS
Einstein was right, of course, when he said, "The release of the
power of the atom has changed everything." In World War II we used
to worry that this part of the world couldn't protect itself against
the (other) parts. In World War II the nations of the world targeted
each other. Now the whole world lives (!) under target of World War
III. The whole fo the world is rapidly becoming a wired and constant-
ly rewired time bomb that could go off almost any year now and quite
by accident. The release of the power of the atom has changed every-
thing because it is really endangering mother earth herself. It's
hard to picture 50,000 nuclear warheads which represents the combined
arsenal of the Soviet Union and United States. But if we remember
that World War II represented something between 3 and 4 megatons and
realize that 50,000 warheads represent 15,000 megatons, we have some
idea of the difference. It is estimated that if you wanted to exhaust
the explosive power of these 50,000 warheads, you would have to take a
Heroshima-sized bomb and explode one a minute, sixty an hour, twenty-
four hours a day for two uninterrupted years.
Now from a religious point of view . . . such arsenals simply
can't be countenanced. . . . Only God has the authority to end life
on this planet. We human beings only have the power. And as our
power is so clearly not authorized by any tenet of the faith--Jewish,
Catholic, Muslim--I think you have to say that it is a sin not only to
use nuclear weapons; it's a sin merely to build and to possess nuclear
weapons. . . . All nulcear-weapons-possessing nations are living in
sin. And living in sin in most situations is as nothing (!) compared
to living in sin in this situation. I think in the sight of the Al-
mighty the `mere' possession of nuclear weapons must be comparable to
the `mere' possession of slaves! Now the debate 150 years ago over
slavery was whether we could `humanize' the institition of slavery and
those who said `No! We must abolish it altogether!' So the debate
today seems to be between those who say we must `clean up' these
weapons and those who say, `No, we must abolish these weapons alto-
gether.' . . . We need today a new abolitionist movement.
II. WAR
To call war itself an enemy seems a pretty far-fetched, radical,
flaky idea. If it sounds rather far out, that may simply reflect how
far behind the agenda of the world we have slipped. If we're gonna
save the world. And the reason why I suggest that war itself (!) is
our enemy #2 is that, having bitten the nuclear apple, the human race
cannot return to innocence. Even if we succeed in stopping the de-
ployment and eventually the production of all nuclear weapons, the
knowledge of how to make them will forever and ever and ever be part
of the storehouse of human knowledge. . . That is really a devas-
tating fact to come to grips with. If two nations go to war, instant-
ly they'll start making those bombs again.
And therefore I think we have the recognize again how far we have
gotten behind the agenda of the world because we need the kinds of
international order to settle the disputes of this world in other than
military means, because there simply are fewer and fewer military solu-
tions to human problems anymore.
But to continue Einstein's sentence, "The release of the power of
the atom has changed everything except our way of thinking." Alas,
the Defense Department still talks of limited or protracted nuclear
war, and the American people still think we have a defense! We still
think these weapons can defend the nation! We still think we have
a defense budget--we have an offense budget! What a wonderful
thing it would be if radio and all the other means of communication
called it the `offense budget' every time they referred to it.
Because it's true! We can wage lethal war(!), but one thing we can-
not do anymore is defend the nation. Confucius said, "In politics
the correct word should always be used." It would be much better
if we called it the `war department' and referred to the `offense
budget.'
Most people still think of war as war! When in fact nuclear war
hasn't really got a name now. It's suicide. It's homicide. It's
omnicide--killing all that exists. The final folly of the few killing
the many is killing everyone, themselves included. And the problem
seen so clearly by Einstein is simply that the truth that stares us in
the face we don't see until it hits us in the face. . . . A crisis
is not really a crisis until it's validated by disaster. So Einstein's
full statement, "The release of the power of the atom has changed
everything except our way of thinking," seems to me to be terribly
relevant. Thus we drift toward a catastrophe of unparalleled magni-
tude.
III. THE RUSSIANS
. . . In any discussion of the enemy, one can hear the ques-
tion clicking in the audience's mind, "All well and good, reverend,
but what about those Russians?" And, it should be well remembered,
the same question is asked on the other side, [Coffin posed the ques-
tion in the Russian language, and then translated it:] "Can we trust
those Americans?!" So the question is asked on both sides.
Let's see if we can put it in some kind of a context. I think
perhaps what has most fundamentally changed in the world--except in
our minds--is that the survival unit is no longer a single nation--
or a single anything! The survival unit in our time is the whole
human race. That's the only realistic way to look at things.
Four hundred years ago Galileo looked through the telescope and
saw that our planet is not the center of the whole universe but only
one in a whole galaxy. And today anyone with any vision looking at
the world can see that the twentieth century is not the American
Century. Nor is it the Russian Century. Nor will it be the Chinese
Century. It has to be called, at the end of the twentieth century,
the Human Century. In the late twentieth century the absolute sover-
eign power of nation-states is outdated, as was the idea of state's
rights when Calhoun defended it and Jefferson Davis fought for it.
And if we don't see that, again it shows how far behind the agenda
of the world we've slipped.
In the late twentieth century, for instance, territorial dis-
crimination should be seen as evil as racism because, as I've
said, the survival unit in our time should be seen to be the entire
human race.
Now this refound oneness is, of course, only the rediscovered
reality of an ancient truth. From a religious point of view, this is
old hat. We've always belonged on to another. Everyone of us on
this planet--that's the way God made us. From a Christian point of
view, Christ died to keep us that way. So our sin is that we are
keeping asunder that which God Herself has joined together! The
answer to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" is "No! I'm
my brother's brother! My brother's sister! My sister's brother!
. . ." In other words, from a religious point of view, Christian
community is not something we are called upon to create--only
something we are called upon to recognize. And make manifest.
SIBLINGS IN CHRIST And that, I think, is the first thing we
Americans have to say about our enemy, the Russians: They are our
brothers and sisters. It's not enough merely to say, "Well, they
breathe and believe. They have children, for whom they have aspir-
ations, just as we have children for whom we have aspirations." We
have to say something stronger than that! We have to say they are
brothers and sisters. And this understanding becomes critically im-
portant when you realize that wars always begin in the mind! You
have to think someone to death first! Now you can kill a brother!
Ominously, symbolically, the first recorded killing in the Bible was,
of course, a fratricide, when Cain killed Abel. But it's much harder
to kill a brother than to kill a Marxist. And it's easy to kill a
"leftist terrorist!" A "guerrila." Most of whom in El Salvador are
called "Freedom Fighters"--which show how important a name is. Or
it's much easier to kill a [Coffin gives the name in Russian, which
he translates as] "a shark of Wall Street," as the Soviets used to
call us, rather than "our brothers and sisters, the Americans."
So the first thing I think we have to say about our enemy is
that they are our brothers and sisters.
LOVE YOUR ENEMIES Now we read in Scripture, "`You have heard
it said that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' but I
say to you, `Love your enemies.'" [Matthew 5:43-44; cp. following ver-
ses as well.] At first, that sounds very straightforward kind of a
commandment, although it's as easy to follow as for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle. But personally I think it's a very diff-
icult notion to grasp: How do you "love your enemy'? Jesus, who
taught us to love our enemies, passed the harshest possible judg-
ment against all who are cruel and unjust. And the government of
the Soviet Union certainly is just that! Cruel and unjust! To
millions of its own inhabitants and millions outside its borders.
How then are we to love the Russians and oppose cruelty and injus-
tice, granted that they are our brothers and sisters? It isn't an
easy proposition, it seems to me, because love represents both ten-
derness and judgment.
AT ONE IN SIN Well, let me suggest a couple of ways to go
about it. Augustine said, "Never fight evil as if it were something
that arose totally outside of yourself." Repeating Saint Paul's
well-known statement, "All have sinned and fallen short. . . ."
[Romans 3:23] Now these biblical statements have marvelous appli-
cation to private and public life. "All have sinned and fallen
short." That means very simply that we Americans too have inter-
vened monstrously in the internal affairs of others. Iran. Gua-
temala. The Dominican Republic. Cuba. Vietnam. Cambodia. Chile.
And now El Salvador and Nicaragua. Generally, we have intervened
in order to insure that countries don't go communist, and the So-
viets intervene in order to insure they stay communist.
All repression of Soviet liverties at home is dreadful! No
question about it. But it's more than matched by American compli-
city in the repression of these same liberties abroad. Think of
South Korea. Or South Africa. Philippines. Pakistan. And what
the Russians are doing in Poland is heartbreaking! But it's cer-
tainly not comparable to the torture and death that we are aiding
and abetting every day in El Salvador! And if we Americans de-
plore, as deplore we should, what the Russians are doing in Af-
ghanistan, then perhaps we should look to Nicaragua where, appar-
antly, we have been inching our way across the Rubicon without
even admitting it.
In other words, even if as yet we are not at one with the
Russians in love, at least we are one with them in sin. Which is
no mean bond when you stop to think about it! Which is no mean
bond because it precludes the possibility of separation through
judgment. That's the meaning of the scriptural injunction,
"Judge not that you not be judged." [Matthew 7:1]
AT ONE IN SHAME (INTERNATIONAL PATRIOTIC SHAME) So we are not
only brothers and sisters, we and the Russians. We are fellow sin-
ners. And there must be as many Russians who know that as there are
Americans, although for obvious reasons their voices are more muted.
I think the world is sustained by a kind of international solidarity
of people who are ashamed of what their governments are doing. And
I think the shame is not only a deeply religious emotion--which it
obvious is--but also I'm suggesting it is an intensely patriotic
emotion, which reflects the determination and courage of citizens to
carry on a lover's quarrel with their governments--which is the es-
sence of patriotism. Not a grudge fight. But certainly a lover's
quarrel. Which in turn is only a reflection of God's continuing
lover's quarrel with the entire world.
Now in international affairs, the importance of shame is cru-
cial! If we Americans consider ourselves sinless--as apparently
President Reagan seems to think we are--that all the evil is over
there in that empire--and the Soviets are the Devil with whom ob-
viously you never strike a bargain--then we never seriously nego-
tiate an end to the arms race--which we are certainly not doing!
And if we think the only thing the enemy understands is force,
then we have to behave as if the only thing we understand is force.
There's no other way of doing it. And that's just about what we're
doing. Right now.
IV. THE ENEMY IS US
This brings us to enemy number four. You remember Pogo's words,
"We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us." I think it's true in
public as in private life. We are always our own worst enemy. Said
a fellow, "Thou has not half the power to do me harm as I have to be
hurt." Wonderful line. Again, in personal and in international life
too. And to quote Saint Augustine once more, "Imagine the vanity of
thinking that your enemy can do you more damage than your enmity."
[Enmity means ill will on one or both sides; mutual antagonism;
hatred.] That's a beaut, isn't it? . . .
Well, what damage to us has our hatred--our enmity--of others
done us? Among the many insights of the Roman Catholic Church that
I prize is certainly the one that sees that the first of the so-
called cardinal virtues as prudentia, or provodentia, which we can
translate "darn good thinking." In other words, only if your heart's
full of love can you think straight. . . . That's a hard one for the
academic world to appreciate.
Only if your heart's full of love can you think straight. Love
has a limbering effect on the mind. Hatred paralyzes it. Lack of
compassion distorts the intellect. . . Maybe not when it comes to
examining the stomachs of spiders, but certainly when it comes to
dealing with the hearts of human beings. Love, far from blind, is
visionary! It is love that sees our oneness with all humanity!
That sees the Russians as sisters and brothers.
And love sees also as sisters and brothers all the poor and per-
secuted of the world. . . . Neither President Reagan nor his Soviet
adversaries even mention the 250,000,000 who have no housing in the
world, the 300,000,000 who are unemployed, 550,000,000 who are il-
literate, the 700,000,000 who are undernourished, the 900,000,000 who
live on less than 30 cents a day, and the 2,000,000,000 (!) who have
no access to clean water--which is crucial because the physicians tell
us that eighty percent of the world's illnesses are related to unsani-
tary water. [Cp. Matthew 25:31-46]
All these sisters and brothers are victims--are they not--of
callous thinking? Victims of our enmity? Let's make it stronger
and call it "stinking thinking"--to borrow a phrase from Alcoholics
Anonymous. Victims of the worldwide greed for arms--which includes
the Third World too and not only the Soviet Union and United States.
These are victims by denial! The bombs are already falling on the
poor, and the world now spends a million dollars a minute on the
arms race.
But the opposite of love is really not hatred but fear. "Per-
fect love casts out fear." [I John 4:18] Fear is always the enemy
that defeats us both as individuals and as a nation. Wrote that
great Indian Sigoor (sp?), "The mind sucking safety rushes towards
its death." Frankly, nothing scares me like scared people, whether
they are scared individuals or a scared people, a nation scared to
death of communism, scared to death of being "soft" on the commun-
ists, scared perhaps most of all of being humiliated by communists.
Don't we always fear most those who have the power to humiliate us?
"Thou has not half that power to do me harm as I have to be hurt."
Americans think fear is the best deterrent towards war! But
in the long run it may be the very worst. Here are some wise words
spoken by a British foreign minister shortly before World War I:
"Fear begets suspicion and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts
till each government feels that it would be criminal and a betrayal
of its country not to take every precaution, while every government
regards the precaution of every other government as clear evidence
of hostile intent." I think that describes our situation perfectly.
Right now. In our enthusiasm for deterrence, we forget that deter-
rence, as E. P. Thompson say, " . . . is not a stationary but a de-
generate estate." Fear finds ever more insidious weapons. Fear
continually enlarges the government's control over its population
and that over its client states. Fear urges us to sacrifice free-
dom for security, to have more defense than things worth defending.
So our last and first enemy is always the enemy within. Our
last and first enemy is our own enmity, our own hatred fueled by
irrational fears for ourselves. . . .
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