The and Evangelical Radicalism Author(s): DAVID R. SWARTZ Source: Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Vol. 3, No. 2 (FALL 2009), pp. 51-79 Published by: Michigan State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41887630 . Accessed: 18/02/2015 07:16

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DAVIDR. SWARTZ UNIVERSITY OFNOTRE DAME, DEPARTMENT OFHISTORY

The New Left and

Radicalism Evangelical

1968 Bill Milliken,a religiousyouth workerin the gang-infested Lower East Side of New YorkCity, met a fieryproponent of Students In fora DemocraticSociety (SDS). Santos condemned Christianityfor failingto address social problems.A particularlypointed conversation, in whichSantos told Millikenthat his "sweet,smiling " was tryingto make "house niggersout of us,"prompted the young evangelical to pace a Manhattanbridge in the middle of the nightand ponder a technocratic, "death-producing"America:

Thesilhouettes ofgray buildings lost their beauty. Outwardly, the buildings had anaura of beauty- majestic, a picture of strength. . . But their beauty was only steel-and-concretedeep. Inside those buildings, a death-producing machine hadbeen created. A machinethat was run on thegears of a valuesystem that putprogress before people. Power-hungry, dog-eat-dog executives reaped the realharvest. The middle masses who worked for the kings had been shaped intorobots, pushing their assigned buttons so thatthe monarchs could grab thekingdom and the power and the glory.

Despitethese misgivings and thesocial convulsions that exposed the failure of Americanpolitics - gratingpoverty, race riots,the violentDemocratic conventionin Chicago,the assassinationsof RobertKennedy and Martin journalforthe Study ofRadicalism, Vol.3,No. 2, 2009, pp. 51-80. ISSN 1930-1189. ©2009 Michigan StateUniversity BoardofTrustees. Allrights reserved. 51

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LutherKing Jr.-Milliken remained a mainstreamevangelical by day.He remainedsympathetic to BillyGraham, an emblemof modern conservative .He volunteeredin the public school systemand triedto repairfrayed racial tensions between rival gangs. But at nighthe increasingly driftedto SDS meetingsin the East Villagewhere he "rapped"with Santos and otherleftists who spokeof "the beast that must be slain."Milliken began to agreethat "the power structure with all ofits technocracy and weaponry has too tighta gripon thepeoples lives."He lamented,"The cancerseemed to have spread everywhere."The failingstate ill-served by the ineffective ministrationsof liberal politics could be curedonly by "majorsurgery." He wonderedwhether "the only way to deal withthis kind of violence is with theviolence of thewhip. If Jesuswere here today, I wondered,how would he deal withthe money-changersof our time?With a whip?Maybe. Or a machinegun?"1 Thattheologically conservative evangelicals might in factharbor leftist sympathieswas incomprehensibleto mostmovement leftists, whose roots in politicalliberalism took a verydifferent trajectory than Millikens journey outof a traditionthat was equal partsapolitical and politicallyconservative.2 ChristianityToday , a magazinerepresenting a party-line strain of evangelicalism thatseemed to dominate in the 1960s, had editoriallyendorsed Barry Goldwater forpresident in 1964,condemned civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as a disrupterof societal order, and consistentlysupported the Vietnam War. Evencountercultural evangelical "Jesus Freaks," lacking a hardrightist edge, failedto offeraid to theleft, instead flaunting an apoliticalimpulse. Berkeley s ChristianWorld Liberation Front (CWLF), a lapsedrightist Campus Crusade chapterwith close tiesto theJesus People movement,seemed to epitomize thehostility of evangelicalism toward the New Left.From 1969 to 1971,CWLF engagedin pitchedbattle with SDS. CWLF tookover several SDS meetings and competedwith SDS forrally sites on theCal-Berkeley campus. A July1971 articlein Ramparts, the brash muckraking monthly from San Francisco,in turnportrayed the faith of the CWLF as onlyfor "the fearful, the guilt-ridden and thechildish, for those unprepared to dive,to maketheir faith leap intoa politicalreality or mysticaldepth." Calling articles in CWLF s tabloidRight On "nothingbut half-bakedand awkwardattempts at politicalrelevancy," Rampartsargued that they were instead a frontfor the right, that "a takeover by right-wingsugar-daddies" was impending.3

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Notwithstandingthe mutualhostility between Right On and Ramparts, theirshared space, level of interaction, and commonpolitical critique serve to destabilizeseveral historiographies. A secularistperspective, as Douglas Rossinowhas shown,did notuniformly characterize movement radicals.4 Nor did ChristianityTodays "law and order"Republicanism typify a remarkably diverseevangelicalism at midcentury.These stereotypes, however, obscured a growingcadre of left-leaningevangelicals. Around 1971,members of CWLF beganto unionizefarm workers and advocatefor . Membersof evangelical communes such as thePost-Americans in Chicago and The OtherSide in Philadelphiaprotested the Vietnam War and nuclear powerplants. Students in leadingevangelical colleges such as Wheatonand in thestudent organization InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical ministrywith chapters at hundredsof stateuniversities across the United States,expressed resonance with the social critiquesof SDS. Evenif the New Leftwas unwillingto claimthem, some evangelicals willingly drew resources and inspirationfrom the New Left.Galvanized by a continuedracial caste systemin the South,by growingmilitary action in SoutheastAsia, and by disillusionmentwith America and itstechnocracy, an emergingevangelical leftdenounced the evangelical establishment for its inaction against structural injustice.As a minorityeven within progressive evangelicalism, the numbers of evangelicalssympathetic to New Leftsocial critiqueswere not large. Yet their - antiliberalideology, strident activism, and Manicheanrhetoric evidences ofa shareddiscursive strategy with the New Left- pointto a newevangelical politicalstyle and underscorethe inadequacy of historiographical boundaries ofboth evangelicalism and theNew Left.5

I.

Evangelicalradicals echoed the New Leftcritique of liberalismas soft, compromising,and morallyand spirituallyvacuous.6 The persistenceof the racial caste systemamong southernconservatives, suggested evangelical radicalsand leftistsalike, pointed to deeperproblems with the nationthat liberalismseemed unwillingto confront.SDS, the seminalorganization of theNew Left,mocked liberal optimism that education, Americas essentialist creed of equality,and gradualistpolitics would graduallyend segregation

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 54 DavidR. Swartz and thegrowing military conflict in SoutheastAsia. Liberalismsponderous efforts,SDS contended,betrayed its complicityin an unholytrinity of big business,the media, and governmentbureaucracy. Leftists charged that "The System,""The Establishment," or "thetechnocracy," as they variously referred to theAmerican power structure, maintained impoverished commitments to unlimitedeconomic growth, technology, and Americanglobal dominance. Evangelicalradicals, like secular leftists, vociferously attacked the concept ofunlimited economic growth, an importantmarker of the liberal consensus. In the 1930s,British economist John Maynard Keynes suggested that if the governmentcorrectly regulated economic structures through managing the supplyof currency and theflow of government spending, a permanentand unlimitedpattern of economic growth could prevail over the cyclical patterns ofboom andbust that had characterizedmuch of American history.7 Although evangelicalradicals did offereconomic critiques of unlimited growth, their most insistentopposition came on moral grounds:at its base, Keynesian economicsmerely justified corporate greed. The Post-Americans denounced Proctor& Gamble,Ford, AT&T, and Westinghousefor perpetuating the "liberal-industrialscheme" of unlimited economic growth. "We protest," Jim Wallisdeclared in an exemplaryPost- American critique of liberalism, "the materialisticprofit culture and technocraticsociety which threaten basic humanvalues."8 CWLF s JackSparks echoed, "We are controlled... by an economicbureaucracy which has been a longtime building and whichrolls inexorablyalong, constantly increasing our alienationfrom ourselves, from freedomand fromeach other."9Canadian GeraldVandezande of the leftist Institutefor Christian Studies (ICS) skeweredNixons economicpolicies in 1971,writing, "Never mind whethermankind needs stillmore cars. Never mindthe pollution. Never mind the spirit-deadening assembly-line routine. Nevermind the starvingmillions. Never mind Gods man,our neighbour. We'vegot to produce.So, getwith it!"10 The liberalscheme of high spending to stimulatethe economyin manyways became the symbolof prosperity gone awryfor a generationof young evangelicals. Objectionsto faithin scienceand to the"spirit-deadening assembly-line routine"of technology pervaded evangelical radicals skepticism of unlimited growth."The spiritualrevolutionary is not enamoredwith either social or physicalsciences," stated CWLF s "RevolutionaryCatechism." "He knowsonly one truescience: the science of the application of Gods loveto people."11Bill

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Kallio,an antiwarleader at WheatonCollege, parroted New Leftrhetoric in theschool newspaper, arguing that "technology has takencontrol, and man has become its servant.. . The Americanmyth, that consumption brings happiness,has produceda societythat has enslaveditself to thedemands of a technologicalsystem."12 Bill Pannell,a blackevangelical, wrote,

Wedon t particularlycare for the poor in our own ranks, and technology and affluencehave made it possible for us to avoid them. Technology has produced thefreeways, and affluence(with the complicity of theFederal Housing Authority)has produced the suburbs.13

Evangelicalradicals also denouncedthe managerial implications of new technology.14Post- American Boyd Reese, inspired by sociologists C. Wright Mills and WilliamDomhoff s notionof a "powerelite," despaired about the wealthand powerof an oligarchyof corporate,government, and military eliteswhose decisions trickled down through the middle levels of bureaucracy withthe help of technologicalexperts.15 Kallio, citing social criticCharles Reich,feared that "a rampanttechnology" threatened to turnlife into a "structured,sterile, concrete existence."16 The bureaucraticmaze, buttressed by scienceand technology,threatened to extinguishhuman autonomy and .A campuspastor in Illinoisworried about the "self-perpetuating technocracyto whichman is becomingenslaved. What man makes is no longerhis tool buthis master.The idols ofbigger, more, and fastermust be demolishedbefore we sacrificeourselves on theiraltars."17 Bob Goudzwaard of ICS intoned,"Our gods ofprogress, ever-expanding GNP, technological innovation,and scientificautomation have failed us."18 Informed by New Left sociology,evangelical radicals defied the stereotype of unrelenting evangelical supportfor big businessand new technology. These two elementsof the technocracy,contended evangelical leftists, necessarilyresulted in a third:American imperialism. Though fortified by a booming economyand new technologies,the tremendousappetites of corporationsrequired ever-expanding markets that spilled outside American borders.The United States, Wallis asserted, nurtured an "expansionistthrust."19 Wallisdrew heavily from New Leftisthistorians, especially William Apple- man Williams,whose Tragedyof American Diplomacy became the primer of revisionistdiplomatic history.20 The Post-Americans also assignedGabriel

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Kolkos TheRoots of American Foreign Policy and MerloJ. Pusey s TheU.S.A. Astridethe Globe in theirfree university courses.21 CWLF s JillShook, linking theAmerican presence in Vietnamto heftycontracts with Esso International, Lear Siegler,and ITT Federal Electric,implied that corporations shaped Americandiplomacy.22 Another writer from CWLF blamed "the system" forsupporting "the war machinein SoutheastAsia. It is thesystem that has carefullynurtured the most disastrousprogram of economicand military imperialismthis planet as everwitnessed."23 Evangelical leftists maintained that,rather than democratizingthe world,American attempts to contain communismand spread democracybetrayed an attemptto solidifyits imperialdominance.24 Drinkingdeep fromthe wells of revisionist history and New Leftsociol- ogy,some evangelicalradicals eyed conspiracyat the highestlevels of the UnitedStates government. The demandfor increased corporate profits, they believed,drove unjust distributions of humanitarian aid, sparkedwars that killedmillions in SoutheastAsia, and imposedjarring systems of technology on third-worldnations. Some- speakingof "Amerika"or "theAmerican way of Death"- corruptedpatriotic phrases to expresstheir anger toward thenation.25 Mourning American abuse towardblacks, women, third-world nations,and the poor, other evangelicalradicals compared America to Babylonor Rome.26Even antiwarsenator Mark Hatfield of Oregon,clearly morecomfortable in electoralpolitics than most evangelical radicals, used thisrhetoric. In an addresscomposed by his speechwriterWes Michaelson, whowas also partof the Post- American community, the senator told a group ofevangelical students in WesternPennsylvania that:

Romehas begun to burn. The time has run out. The challenge and the promise areours. No cross,no crown.It may be toolate to change the historical digres- sionof this country, but it is nottoo late for us togive a witnessto the Christ whocame and did not sanction the status quo.27

"God is an american,"read the satiricalcover of the fall1972 issue of the Post-Americany"and Nixon is his prophet."The bittertaste of a fallennation remainedon lips of some evangelicals,evidence of a formativeencounter withthe New Left.

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II.

The bitterrhetoric of the Post-Americanpointed not only to evangelical appropriationof New Leftsocial critiques,but also to a radicalpolitical style thatsharply contrasted with the midcentury"new evangelical"impulse to submitto establishmentstructures. The "forsakes the spirit of Christ," arguedan editorof Today , when it uses "picketing, demonstration, and boycott."28Even nascent attempts at proteston evangelicalcampuses by theevangelical left proved mild indeed compared with secular universities. Studentsat Wheatonin suburbanChicago, for example, followed procedure mandatedby the administration, swore off profanity in theirantiwar chants, and prayedfor their enemies during antiwar demonstrations. And yeteven thesemild protests marked a profounddeparture from evangelical quietism. A 1967 antiwarprotest, one of the firstat the college,offers a glimpse of the initialdelicate balance thatthe emergingevangelical left sought to strike.As severalhundred cadets marched to McCullyField forthe annual presidentialROTC review,22 studentsgreeted them with signs proclaiming "Bewareof Escalation," "A MilitarySolution Is Not an EnduringSolution," and "Prayfor Peace." Student leader Bob Watson,pointing out the moderate toneof the signs, told the local newspaper"that no massappeal was intended by the demonstration."In fact,they had recruitedonly a small group so thatthere would be no "irresponsibleactions." Each of the demonstrators signeda letteraddressed to thecollege president and theROTC commander in which theyarticulated their grievances. They even leftthe site early to keep frominterfering with the inspectionof the cadets. The student paper,clearly sympathetic to the demonstrators,took pains to show that - the demonstratorswere "good kids" among them six membersof the ScholasticHonor Society.29Several years later Wheaton protesters staged a die-in depictingVietnamese civilians as the ROTC unitsexecuted their finalroutines. Yet afterboth sides had finishedtheir theater, ROTC men and protestorsshook hands.30Editors of InterVarsitys magazine similarly urgeddissenters to nurturean innerspiritual decorum:

Ifhe earnestlybelieves that God is callinghim to picket,he facesa further restriction:He mustpicket with a brokenheart. Arrogance toward supposed oppressorsis no virtue.Christ cautioned us to be poorin spirit,to mourn.

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Thisdoesn't mean convictionlessness, buthumble firmness. The Til showm spiriťis anti-Christian.31

Despitethis substantial undercurrent of concern for nonviolence and the law,evangelical radicals underwent an importanttransformation in the early 1970s.Increasingly dismissing decorous evangelicalism as passé,even immoral, in theface of social injustice,they began to portrayJesus as a revolutionary figure,added a harderedge to protests,and displayedmore creativityand exuberanceas theytook theirfaith and politicsto the streets.32At Calvin Collegein GrandRapids, Michigan, students hanged the dean in effigyand painted"End the War" in four-foot,white-washed letters high on thewall of an academic building.33At Wheaton,students reenacted death scenes fromVietnam, carried coffins to thecity s draftboard office,mocked cadet rifledrills with displays of toy machine guns, offered bitter commentary on PresidentArmerding, and wore nooses around their necks at demonstrations.34 Evangelicalradicals not constrained by college administrations pushed even further.The Post-Americans and theCWLF, each withformer members of SDS, engagedin methodsdirectly rooted in the activismof the New Left. CWLF pioneereda colorfuland confrontationalstyle of protestincubated on the colorfulsidewalks of Bancroftand TelegraphAvenues in Berkeley, clearlyindebted to theleftist converts of Campus Crusades Jack Sparks. These convertsbrought with them not onlyleftist politics, but also demonstrative methodsof the counterculture such as guerrillatheater, picketing, leafleting, and direct,personal confrontation. "There were so manyprotests," CWLF s SharonGallagher remembers, "that it was a blur."35 CWLF as a group did littleprotesting that was purelypolitical, but individualmembers participated in an arrayof demonstrations ranging from picketsof Sears, strikes with the United Farm Workers, and antiwarprotests at militarybases. And together,members often conducted demonstrations withindemonstrations, often affirming the politics of leftist protesters as they denouncedviolent methods and lack ofspiritual concern. During rallies in Berkeley,for instance, members of CWLF condemnedBerkeley landlords fortheir greed in chargingexorbitant rents, urging both public coercion and the spiritualregeneration of landlords."Pray for your landlord," one pamphletread, "that his entirebeing, including his warpedsense of values, will be changedas he getsinto Jesus."36Similarly, during the Mobilization

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Paradein San Franciscoon 15November 1969, CWLF distributedleaflets both urgingan end to thewar and condemningthe most radical of protesters for tryingto destroyAmerican society. CWLF also appearedat demonstrations wherethousands picketed the brutal repression of Christiansand students in Czechoslovakiaat a Russiantourist bureau, a Nixon appearanceat the St. FrancisHotel, and a conferenceon industrialismat the FairmontHotel in theBay Area.37This strategyof co-belligerencyallowed CWLF to affirm leftistpolitics and evangelicalspirituality simultaneously.38 By 1970 CWLF had assumed an even more confrontationalstyle, one thatresulted on one occasion in theejection of two dozen CWLF members froma regionalSDS meetingin Berkeley.After a CWLFer declared,"I proposethat - alongwith politics - JesusChrist be discussedas theultimate solutionto the problemsfacing the world,"two dozen otherevangelical radicalsapplauded and triedto forcea voteon theresolution. The irateSDS regionalchair yelled, "We willnot discussissues of a non-politicalnature." CWLFers shoutedback thatthey were in factpolitical revolutionaries, but thatthey followed "God, not men.""The thingswe wantto say have direct relevanceto the issues being raisedhere," responded CWLF s Bill Squires. The CWLF memberssubsequently staged a sit-inin frontof the platform, demandingthat SDS "liveup to itsmiddle name and permitall viewsto be heard."Screaming "Pigs! These are pigssent by the American government!" SDSers rushedthe CWLF protesters,shoving, kicking, and draggingeach ofthem out thedoors ofthe meeting hall.39 A leafletingcampaign echoed CWLF s confrontationof SDS, even as it - appropriatedthe SDS style.CWLF s mostprominent leaflet one typicalof itsorientation in theearly 1970s as CWLF lostits Campus Crusade roots and - grewmore sympatheticto leftistpolitical and social concerns mimicked the formof the BerkeleyLiberation Program manifesto, which featured a clenchedfist overtop thirteen demands, the last of which read, "We will unite withother movements throughout the world to destroythis motherfucking - racistcapitalistimperialistsystem."40 CWLF s version in whichthe thirteen demandswere labeled "New BerkeleyLiberation Program"- featured many of the same aestheticflourishes and rhetoricdenouncing high rent,war, environmentaldegradation, oppression, and racism,even as itdeclared, "Jesus proclaimeda spiritualrevolution to bring about a fundamentalchange within, - to deal withthe faulty components of every system thehuman components.

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AcceptHim as yourLiberator and Leader; thenjoin othersof his Forever Familyhere to change thisworld."41 Rooted in Berkeleyscounterculture, CWLF s bombasticlanguage, street theater, breadth of audience, overblown cartoons,and sheervolume helped usher in a new confrontationalstyle - in politicalprotest and in evangelismalike. CWLF confrontedmainstream evangelicals en masse forthe first time at Explo '72 in Dallas, Texas. Stagedby Campus Crusade,Explo '72 attracted nearly85,000 high school and collegestudents for a religiousrally in the CottonBowl. Signsof the establishmentat Explo predominated.Students attendedseminars on "How to Livewith Your Parents," listened to speakers Bill Brightand BillyGraham, and joined in patrioticrituals. Yet a small minorityof Explo participants- perhapsonly several hundred evangelical radicals,many meeting for the first time- viewedthe spectacle with distaste. Thesurge of patriotism in themidst of a heavybombing campaign in Vietnam promptedWallis to condemnthe display of civic religion as a "truncatedand domesticatedgospel." Gallagher of CWLF told a New YorkTimes reporter, "The whole thingreminds you of the Roman Coliseum. Exceptin those daysthe Christiansweren't in the stands.Somethings changed."42 Between interviewswith the national media CWLF, a groupof Mennonites, and the Post-Americans set up literaturebooths and woreblack armbands to protest thewar. Wallis and othersquizzed BillyGraham at a pressconference about hisclose ties with Nixon and histacit approval of the war. The Post- Americans woresandwich-board signs that read, "The 300 PersonsKilled by American Bombs Today Will Not Be Won in This Generation"(a variationof the conventionstheme, "Win the World for Christ in ThisGeneration"), "Choose ThisDay - Make Disciplesor Make Bombs,"and "Loveyour Enemies or Kill YourEnemies." During a militaryceremony, they stood underthe stadiums scoreboard,unfurled a banner"Cross or Flag,Christ or Country," and chanted "Stopthe War!" The protestattracted Dallas policemenand themajor news outlets,but not the explicit support of most Explo participants, though many smiledand said "RightOn" or "Amen"as theywalked by thebooths of the antiwarcontingent. One journalistwrote that Campus Crusade, like the federalgovernment, "was perfectlyable to swallowup dissent."43 The Post-Americans, relying heavily on The OrganizersManual an influentialresource of the New Left,continued their program of contentious antiwardissent in Chicago.44In 1975,they renamed themselves Sojourners,

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheNew Left and Evangelical Radicalism 61 moved into a dilapidatedneighborhood in the northernsection of the Districtof Columbia,and broadenedtheir agenda. In additionto refusing to paywar taxes on theirincome or telephonebills, they agitated for tenants rightsand formedthe Columbia Heights Community Ownership Project to protecthomes fromspeculators. "In a dramaticprotest against real estate speculation,"the WashingtonPost reported,Sojourners members squatted in an apartmentbuilding and marchedwith banners in frontof the Third Districtpolice force.45 They also traveledacross the Eastern seaboard protesting nuclearweapons on siteat munitionsfactories. Sojourners staged hundreds ofprotests in thelast half of the decade, over forty in thefirst six monthsof 1977alone.46 Thus even as nonviolenceremained an absolutevirtue for evangelical radicals,their nonviolence grew more demonstrative. At a communityretreat in thelate 1970s, Sojourners members pledged to pursueactive peacemaking:

Our resistanceto evilmust never be passivebut active, even to thepoint of sacrificeand suffering. Repentance in our day includes non-cooperation with thearms race and the militarism that has overtaken our society. We therefore refusemilitary service, military- related jobs, war taxes, and willengage in nonviolentdirect action and for the sake of peace and justice as consciencedictates and the Spirit leads us.47

InterVarsitychapters also pursuedan approachthat sought to transcendboth thelaw-and-order stance of most evangelicals and theviolence of radical leftist groups.The InterVarsity chapter at ColumbiaPresbyterian Medical Center in New YorkCity, for example, pledged to pursuenonviolent means of quelling campus unrest,even physicallyinjecting themselves between opponents in violentdemonstrations.48 A "Task Force on EvangelicalNonviolence," implementedby Evangelicals for Social Action,urged evangelicals to extend itswitness beyond "indirect action" to "nonviolentdirect action."49 A 1974 Post-American manual on thesubject disavowed name-calling or theuse of hostilewords. "In all ofour actions," wrote Richard Taylor, "we will express the loveand humanitythat is so lackingin thisplace of death." He toldnonviolent demonstratorsto prayfor their attackers and to recognizethat "police and othersare beloved childrenof God - Christdied forus all." Further,he urgedevangelical activists to "getthe factsright," maintain a humblespirit

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 62 DavidR. Swartz whileprotesting, seek spiritual guidance and engagein regulardisciplines of prayerand groupworship, place a priorityon publiceducation, and engage policymakersin good faithnegotiations.50 Others published task lists, wrote guidelineson how to negotiatewith the press and thepolice, played strategy games,engaged in scenario-writing,and conducted"force-field analysis" in makinggroup decisions.51 Rooted in precedentsof leftist protest, evangelical peacemakingwas notpassive. Theevangelical encounter with the New Left significantly widened the range ofsocial activism in a traditionpreviously marked by apoliticism and passive ballotpunching. Christianity Today even printed an articleby Ron Siderthat suggestedthe use ofblockades as a formof nonviolent intervention. 52From politeprotests at Wheatonto thecontentious tactics of the Post- Americans/ Sojourners,evangelical radicals pioneered the reincarnation of "the as publicdrama" - a dramashowing that evangelicals were no longercontent witha passiveapproach to politics.

III.

Attentiveto the activistmethods of the New Left,evangelical radicals also heededthe call ofmovement intellectual C. WrightMills "to serve as a moral conscienceand to articulatethat conscience." In his 1958"Pagan Sermon to the ChristianClergy," Mills told spiritualleaders they were operating in "moraldefault" by not speaking out against the madness of the nuclear arms race.Christians, he implied,should feel the burden of moral imperatives in waysthat secular leftists cannot.53 Evangelical radicals complied with Millss admonition,speaking out withspiritual language and moralclarity against not onlynuclear weapons, but also poverty,sexism, imperialism, and the verystructure of Americansociety. Shattering a long-standingevangelical apoliticism,evangelical radicals helped break the midcenturyevangelical hesitanceto tie faithclosely to politicsnot onlyby extendingthe limitsof evangelicalactivism but also in itsuse ofa rhetoricof moralistic absolutism. This pointmust be statedcarefully, for mainstream "new evangelicals," thoughin generalabandoning the old fundamentalistrhetoric of religious warfare,did occasionally use Manichean language.54Billy Graham,for instance,regularly denounced communism at evangelisticcrusades in the

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1950s.Evangelical radicals, however, began to sound morelike their funda- mentalistgrandparents than theirnew evangelicalparents in theirliberal use ofapocalyptic language. Their recovery of such words as "sin,""satanic," and "demonic,"however, was indebtedto themoral rhetoric inspired by the New Leftand the countercultureas much as by fundamentalism.Though some sectorsof the New Leftexhibited hostility toward faith, the movement nonethelessnurtured an ethosthat resonated with many characteristics of conservativereligion, particularly in themovements search for meaning and authenticity,its demand for total commitment, and itsview of the world as dividedbetween light and darkness.Inter Varsity s president, John Alexander, wrotethat leftist radicals "almost consider themselves todays Christians, the only ones dedicatedto Christsconcern for the peoplenessof people. Theyare the righteous.The segregationistsand inactiveare the sinners."55 Moreover,some in SDS nurturedhope ofrevolution that would reconfigure cosmichistory, not unlike the Christian conception of the Second Coming. Therewas, according to an admiringICS member,"an apocalypticsureness thata JudgmentDay is comingto help the Oppressed."56Imbued with this apocalypticsensibility, the New Leftdenounced liberals for their slow ap- plicationof science, technology, and educationin implementingsocial justice. SDS, forexample, drawing from civil rights activists, many of whom were rootedin old-timeblack religion, condemned John F. Kennedysstrategy of applyingsteady and incrementalpressure on southernstates. The New Left insteadechoed the call bythe Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) fora theologicallypessimistic, activist role in forcingan immediate end to thesin ofsegregation.57 Some northernevangelicals, themselves believers in originalsin and tied ecclesiasticallyto theabolitionists of the nineteenth century, could and did identifywith the religiously saturated call foran end to segregation.58Though evangelicalradicals' belated responsefailed to help shape the movement againstsegregation, the inspirationof civil rightsaction decisivelydrove thempast liberalperspectives. John Perkins, a southernblack community activistcharacterized by one observeras "a -believingfundamentalist forblack power,"helped bridgeNew Leftand evangelicalmoral-spiritual judgmentsagainst segregation. Ambivalent in the early1960s towardthe civilrights movement, Perkins lashed out againstthe southern caste system aftersuffering a beating in the late 1960s fromwhite policemen. Faith was

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 64 DavidR. Swartz politics,Perkins began to argue: '"New birthin Jesus meantwaging war againstsegregation just as much as it meantputting the honky-tonksand jukejoints out of business." "Racism," in fact,"is satanic,and I knewit would takea supernaturalforce to defeatit."59 Perkinssvocabulary signaled a new applicationof moral and spiritual rhetoricto evangelicalpolitics. Richard Barnet of the Churchof the Savior in Washington,D.C., explainedin Sojournersthat questions of international economicswere moral, not merely technical or managerial, as JohnF. Kennedy had asserted.60Genteel liberals such as Kennedyin factfailed to graspthe utter povertyof bureaucratic capitalism and themilitary- industrial complex. Evil itself,two Post- Americans wrote, resides in thesesystems.61 Wallis continued to use absolutistlanguage to condemnthe Vietnam War. Not a "mistake"or a "blunder,"as liberalsoften argued, the war was a "lie ... a crimeand a sin . . . thatcontinues to poison thebody politic."62 Speaking of demonstrations againstmilitary fighter jets at Whitney Aircraft in Connecticut,Ladon Sheats ofKoinonia Farm in Georgiaexplained that protests would likely bring legal prosecution,time in jail away fromfamilies, loss of jobs, violenceagainst them,even "fear,loneliness, and despair."But "theloss of consciencemay be a higherrisk - themoral and spiritualparalysis that accompanies silence and complicityin theface of evil."63 The Post-Americans developed theological categories that reflected this Manicheanrhetoric. Bob Sabath,describing American power as a satanic principality,coupled the Apostle Johns image of "principalities and powers" withthe leftistfear of governmentpower and economicbureaucracy. He expositedRomans 13 in the contextof Revelation13, a chapterthat Sabath readas a political-religiousmanifesto declaring open resistanceto theRoman Empire."Here was theChristians first dictate against the hellish iniquities and arrogantnationalism of the world s mostpowerful nation," explained Sabath. In only35 years, the early church had transformedfrom a law-abidingpeople, suggestingthat "even a legitimatestate ... is alwaysin dangerof becoming satanic.There is an inevitabledrift toward the demonic."Wallis grounded thishermeneutical judgment in the Genesiscreation account, writing that "supernaturalbeings were created for human good (in fact,we cant function withoutthem), but revoltedand fell,with the consequencethat they have an ever-presenttendency to usurp Gods intendedpurpose forthem and hold humansin bondageto theirpretentions to universalsovereignty."64 For

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evangelicalradicals, good and evil werenot abstractcategories; they came to lifein theform of realsupernatural demons. The Post-Americans and othersinterpreted evil in veryspecific ways. Theysaw demonsat work in theconcentrated power of elite Latin American oligarchs,but mostoften in the "UnitedStates of Babylon.""The nationis fallen,"explained , "America is a demonicprincipality."65 Bible studynotes fromthe earlyyears of the Post-American community showhow leaders encouraged "resistance to theprincipalities of death" in the administrationof Richard Nixon and corporateAmerica.66 Milliken spoke of theviolence in "pine-paneledoffices" on Wall Street,which made "spiritual captivesout ofthose who supposedlyown themand pilota financialempire and distributionprocess that forces masses around the world into poverty."67 Siderand Reeseexplained structural injustice in Americato theInter Varsity chapterat NYU-Binghamtonin termsof "principalities and powers."68Post- AmericanJoe Roos suggestedthat Watergate and theVietnam War, which represented"the pinnacle of arrogance," reaffirmed the role of Satan in temporal affairs."The prince of this world," Roos explained,"encourages and delights in the consequentsuffering and moral decay."69That evangelicalradicals vitriolicattacks on thepower elite of America met with equally contentious responses- "WeVe been the most assailed by people and institutionsof wealthand power,"several Post- Americans complained to a WashingtonPost reporterin 1976- onlyconfirmed their sense ofembattlement at thehands ofthe principalities.70 A controlling metaphor of warfare between good and - evil "The churchof JesusChrist is at war withthe systemsof the world, not détente,ceasefire, or peacefulcoexistence, but at war"- characterized evangelicalradical conceptions of American society.71 Ifevangelical radicals suggested that America had succumbedto theforces ofevil, they nonetheless suggested that the larger war between good and evil wouldbe wonthrough the crucifixion, resurrection, and ultimatetriumph of Christover the universe. The cosmic implications of Christ, contended Wallis, extendedbeyond "the liberal . . . theologywhich reduced Jesus to a Galilean boy scout."72Instead, explained Tom Skinner,"Christ is theembodiment of truth,the embodimentof justiceand the embodimentof the personwho has come to destroythe works of the devil.And theworks of thedevil are: war,poverty, hunger, racism, pollution, and all thosethings which set people apart.Jesus Christ has come to destroythese works."73 Evangelical radicals

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 66 DavidR. Swartz enjoyedthe luxury of serving as footsoldiers in a battlethat had alreadybeen won. The workof Christon the crosswould ultimatelydefeat the demonic natureof American power brokers, thus offering hope forsocial justice that secularmessianisms could not.Since thereare "spiritualas wellas political dimensionsto thestruggle for justice, with praying together one ofthe most radicalpolitical actions people can take,"Post- American Reese explained, "it will not be long untilAmerican power will have to answerto Christian prayerand protest."74Evangelical radicals fought alongside God in a fight thatwould conquerAmerican principalities of darkness. The evangelicalleft thus readilyappropriated Manichean rhetoricand activismtoward both evangelicaland leftistends. Perkins,for example, continuallyurged civil rights activists to adopt evangelicalvirtues of sexual purity,Scripture reading, and prayer.With these resources, he suggested,their activismwould be "sharperand theircourage deeper."75 Wallis conversely soughtto fillthe ranks of the fragmenting New Leftwith a massof evangelical activists.These activists - equippedwith spiritual resources to nurturejustice, compassion,and community- wouldrecover the best virtues of the old New Leftas theyusurped contemporaneousincarnations. Evangelical radicals claimedloyalty to Jesus,the ancient Jewish prophets, and nineteenth-century abolitionistsover Marx,leftist sociologists, Black Power,Maosm, and the Weathermen.Yet theirrhetoric and activismwere not merelyevangelistic ploys,as Rampartsbelieved. Even as evangelicalradicals tried to convert secularleftists, they made commoncause withleftist politics. Members of CWLF, forinstance, protested Nixons policies on Vietnamand domestic issues duringthe presidentsappearance in San Franciscoby wavingsigns thatread "Turn to Jesus,Mr. President."76 The multiple agendas of evangelical radicalactivists blended together, blurring lines between politics and faith. Thiswas preciselythe point - to tiethe sacred to thetemporal so closelythat thetwo were indistinguishable. The activistmethods and Manicheanrhetoric of the point suggestivelyto developmentsin broaderevangelicalism. Moving into politics nearlya decade beforethe Reagan revolution, and doingso in a contentious manner,prefigured the political style of the religious right. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson,and OperationRescues RandallTerry, though adopting a very differentpolitical perspective than evangelical leftists, benefited from these precedents.They did nothave to defendtheir political activism to a tradition

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheNew Left and Evangelical Radicalism 67 dominatedbefore the 1970s by a trenchantapoliticism. After Robertson declared at theNational Association of Evangelicals 40th annual convention that "we mustbe preparedfor radical action against the government," a key member ofthe evangelical left wondered, "How is itthat respectable Evangelicals can be flirtingwith radical activism?"77The answer,ironically enough, lay in partwith evangelical radicals themselves. Reintroducing an activistmethod and absolutist,moralistic style into twentieth-century evangelicalism, they bridgedthe New Leftand thereligious right.

IV.

Evangelicalradicals bitterly denounced the nation; rejected unlimited economic growth,big business,technology, and imperialism;borrowed freely from New Leftthinkers such as HerbertMarcuse, Mills, Theodore Roszak, and Williams;rejected both liberaland conservativesensibilities; and adopted activistmethods and Manicheanlanguage. Yet they have not been classified as part of the New Left.New Lefthistoriography, while increasinglyless circumscribedby rigidboundaries and a masternarrative of declension withSDS at thecenter, has nonethelessleft little room for the incongruities ofevangelical radicalism. A genre-bending1970 book byArt Gish, a Churchof the Brethren veteran of the civil rightsand antiwarmovements, underscores the dilemmasof periodizationand boundarymaintenance encountered by historians of the sixties.In theaptly titled The New Left and ChristianRadicalism , Gish urged evangelicalsto mergethe "old, old story"with the New Left.He arguedthat Vietnam,racism, and povertyexposed an "evilsystem that forces men to do evil deeds.""We reject,"wrote Gish, "the bourgeois liberal contention that all changemust be rational,orderly, and withinthe limitsof the present system.The liberalbelieves that the tendencyfor progress is incorporated into the verynature of our institutions.Thus he is forcedto believe that continualprogress is beingmade; even while poverty, starvation, militarism, and racismare on the increase."Gish condemnedthis view as betrayinga naïvecommitment to the"present system and a refusalto understandhow disorderly,irrational, and violentthe present system is." Moral and spiritual puritydemanded resistance to a compromisedliberalism.

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Evenwhile echoing the Port Huron Statements stress on politicalpurity, authenticity,and small,democratic structures, Gish offered an idiosyncratic interpretationofthe movement. The New Left,he argued,was an ideological descendentof sixteenth-century Reformation . Like the contem- porarypolitical protest movement, the minority sect nurtured a two-kingdom dualismthat sharply distinguished between the kingdom of theworld and the kingdomof the church.Moreover, it built a socialist economythat "rejectedselfish, capitalistic motives," embraced "the simple life," adopted nonviolence,and spurnedpolitical change from the top down.Anabaptists, who adheredto a "priesthoodof all believers,"had evenengaged in an early formof "participatory democracy." The New Left,in refusing"to work through themagistrates to achievetheir goals," resembled radical Christian faith in generaland theAnabaptist tradition in particular.78 TheNew Leftfell short, Gish contended, in itspreoccupation with secular solutionsto socialproblems. Affirming basic emphases of evangelicalism such as "heartchange" and personalsalvation, Gish added thatsecular leftists "fail to recognizethat sin also has personalroots ... forit is man who builtthose oppressivestructures."79 Although here, Gish failed to recognizethe existential pulse in the New Leftthat sought inner change along with institutional change,he did nonethelessdepart from the secularmovement in explicitly marryingevangelical Christianity and theNew Leftinto a coherentstructure. The diagnosiswas the same- thatindustrialization, new technology,and automationquashed human dignity and creativity,that the military-industrial complexgenerated wars in third-worldnations, that unlimited economic growthproduced pollution - but the solutionwas not. Gish suggestedthat onlya lovingGod could trulyliberate his followersfrom conformity to the establishedorder. Christ - not radicalpolitics nor easternspirituality - was theultimate weapon against the technocracy. Belief in divinetranscendence could not onlylift individuals out of a bureaucraticmorass but also offer resourcesto help politicallyreconstruct a brokensociety. Faith in Christ added to leftistpolitics offered the best hope fora humaneand just society. Evangelicalradicals in essencesacralized the standard New Leftnarrative of twentieth-centuryAmerican history with peculiarly evangelical addendums. Gishs book, buoyed by its publicationfrom a respectedevangelical publisher,enjoyed readership from a generationof studentswho wantedto challengeestablished structures yet retain their parents stress on the need

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheNew Left and Evangelical Radicalism 69 forpersonal conversion. The Post-American, The OtherSide , and several InterVarsitychapter newsletters, for example, reprinted excerpts of TheNew Leftand ChristianRadicalism. The Post-Americans added it to required readinglists for seminars in Chicago and evangelicalcollege classrooms. Literaturewithin the emergingevangelical left repeatedly affirmed Gishs themes,particularly his basic insistenceon linkingspiritual principles to contemporaryleftist politics.80 The latepublishing date of Gishs effort - eightyears after the Port Huron - Statement,its secular analogue and the tardyemergence of evangelical radicalsin general,however, obscured evangelicalradicalism in broader leftistcircles. Roszak and Marcuse penetratedthe campuses of Wheaton and Calvinonly in thelate 1960s. Evangelicals in Berkeleydid notvoice the languageof the streets until the late 1960s.The anti-authoritarianlanguage ofearly 1960s participatory democracy did notresult in a vibrantnetwork of evangelicalegalitarian communities until the early 1970s. Moreover, not until the early1970s did evangelicalradicals nurture lofty aims of transforming entiresocieties beyond the university or theirown traditions.Even then, the Post-American/Sojourner community, which never exceeded 50 fullmembers in itsintentional community, did not reach40,000 readersof itsmagazine until1980, a fulldecade afterthe New Leftproper staggered to an unseemly end.81And evangelicalradicals remaineda minoritywithin evangelical politicalprogressivism, themselves a minoritywithin broader evangelicalism. Evangelicalswere small, unnoticed latecomers to themovement. The sixties mayhave reachedevangelicalism, but not untilthe seventies. Moreover,as Gishs ChristianRadicalism suggests, not all New Leftist rhetoricand ideas flowedunadulterated through the ranks of the evangelical left.Though some used rhetoricfrom the counterculture and evenprotested on occasion,many explicitly rejected contemporaneous incarnations of the New Left.First, they most often rejected its spiritual vacuity. Although many in theNew Leftnurtured a vaguespirituality, evangelical radicals left-leaning engagementof politicsemanated directly out of theirfaith commitment. "We weren'tagainst what they were doing," remembers Sharon Gallagher of SDS-CWLF battlesin Berkeleyin 1969."We just saw souls."82Richard Mouw, activein the Universityof Chicago chapterof SDS, leftthe organizationin protestof its lack of spiritual depth.83 Even Wallis, perhaps the most politically drivenof all youngevangelicals and a formerprominent organizer in the

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MichiganState University chapter of SDS, leftin utterdisillusionment the movementhe called "oncethe most hopeful force" opposing "the system."84 His faith,while drawingon New Leftpolitics, sought to supersedethose politics.The Christian gospel, he toldan audienceof students at the American Associationof Evangelical Students meeting at Oral RobertsUniversity, was "themost revolutionary - the most radical of all": "The realrevolution cant justdeal withhuman structures. It has to go to theheart of the problem, and the gospel is addressedto all needs,spiritually and socially."85Evangelical social criticOs Guinness,in his 1973tome Dust ofDeath, similarly charged that"underneath the effort of a generationlay dust," despite the courage and astutesocial critiquesof David Riesman,Marcuse, and Mills.86 Second,evangelical radicals objected to mountingNew Left:interest in - violenceto spark social change. Wheaton student Kallio whileresonating with theprofound disillusionment felt by SDS membersin theearly 1970s brought on by"a dehumanizingwar and theassassination of three of Americas most idealisticleaders" - denouncedits "excessive accent ... on socialviolence."87 Milliken,the formerYoung Life worker still convinced that the "beastwas big and oppressive"but not that"the only answer is violentrevolution," cut his tieswith SDS and leftfor Koinonia Farm in Georgia.88The trajectoryof theWeathermen and theBlack Panthers left many evangelical radicals, like the majorityof secular New Leftistswho also rejectedviolent militancy, disenchantedwith the movement. Third,evangelical radicals objected thatthe New Lefthad abandoned participatorydemocracy. The New Leftturn toward racial separation violated the evangelicalradical impulse forbeloved communityand a "distinct radicaldemocratic project" in whichblacks could fullyparticipate in power structures.89When SDS affirmedthe separatistdirection of SNCC in 1967, evangelicalradicals charged that the movement had abandoneddemocratic practicesof black- white cooperation in resistingextant Jim Crow laws, tak- ing freedomrides, and worshippingtogether at black churches.Moreover, power-grabbingby factions within the New Left,they suggested, pointed to thegrowing illiberal tendencies of the movement. CWLF, for example, charged thatthe New Leftincreasingly resembled the fascist right in itsdemands for ideologicalconformity.90 As thesethree objections suggest, evangelical radicals clearly resonated morefully with early forms of the movement.Evangelical radical rhetoric,

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 18 Feb 2015 07:16:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TheNew Left and Evangelical Radicalism 71 anachronisticby the early1970s, sounded much like thatof early1960s New Left.Tellingly, Wallis did not distributecopies of contemporaryNew Leftliterature to potentialrecruits of the evangelicalleft in the early1970s. He urgedthem to read JackNewfield s A PropheticMinority , an adulatory tomewritten about SDS s earlyyears, when a commitmentto civilrights, participatorydemocracy, and nonviolencecharacterized the movement.91 Otherstoo claimedthe thought and spiritand methodsof the New Leftat a pristinemoment long past, essentially appropriating the movement as an idealtype. Not surprisingly,given the disordered chronology, few evangelical radicalsactually joined SDS. Given this problemof periodization,historians have typicallyplaced evangelicalradicals outside the traditional boundaries of the New Left.But thatmight be theresult of a 1960shistoriography that until recently has been preoccupiedwith the trajectory of certain "pure" forms of the New Left.The initialwave of New Lefthistoriography traced SDS fromits egalitarian phase in the 1960s to its fragmentationalong lines of identityin the early1970s. This tale of declensionhas leftlittle room forthe manyleftists who, after the disintegrationof SDS, did not join the Weathermen,drop out,or face co-optationby the right.92And therewere many like KirkpatrickSale, one of the firstchroniclers of the New Left,who strictlyspeaking was not part ofthe movement he traced.Still, as he wrotein SDS,

I was,like most people I know,considerably changed by the events and processes ofthe sixties which SDS helpedto fashion. . . I cameto share the same animus thatmotivated the shapers of SDS, thesame sense of dislocation from the nationthat inspired those still on thecampuses, ultimately even the same radicalizationthat SDS generatednot only in the universities but throughout so manylevels of the society.93

Like Sale,many evangelical radicals shared the spirit that launched SDS. In fact,some, denouncing the illiberal turn of the movement, characterized themselvesas the truecarriers of the movement.A cohortof evangelical radicals in the early1970s claimed to be the real New Left.94CWLF, for example,suggested that evangelicals "radicalize the revolutionary movement!"95Scholars, busy trackingthe late-i96os immolationof the New Left,have overlookedthe persistenceof "sixties"impulses into the

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1970s in such unlikelysites as businessand professionalcircles, nonelite universities,small towns, and mainstreamreligious denominations, as well as a kaleidoscopicmass of secular political radicals who were less than faithfulin theirreadings of Tom Haydenand Mills.96Evangelical radicalism, an ill-fitto standardnarratives of the New Left(as it is to scholarshipon evangelicalismthat remains preoccupied by the religious right, even as new alliances betweenevangelicals and prison reformers,environmental and humanrights activists, and theDemocratic Party emerge in thetwenty-first century97),suggests that boundaries first established by scholars of the New Leftcontinue to requireexpansion. One of themore striking ironies of the 1960s is thatthe historiographyof a movementdedicated to ground-level participatorydemocracy was so dominatedby the studyof white,male, eliteuniversity students. As a risinggeneration of scholarsless investedin protectingits own activistlegacy continues to exploresixties radicalism, it willlikely follow the evidence down surprisingpaths.

NOTES

1.Bill Milliken, SoLong, Sweet Jesus (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Press, 1973), 37, 95, 107, 111. "Santos"isa pseudonym.Milliken still declines to reveal his identity. See Bill Milliken interview,23May 2007. 2. Theterm "evangelical" refers to theologically conservative Protestants holding to four keytraits: crucicentrism, biblicism, evangelistic activism, and conversionism. Most evangelicalshave roots in the Great Awakenings ofthe eighteenth andnineteenth centuries andin early twentieth-century fundamentalism. SeeDavid Bebbington, Evangelicalism in ModernBritain: From the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 1-19; George Marsden,"The Evangelical Denomination," inEvangelicalism andModern America , ed. GeorgeMarsden (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), vii-xix x. 3. JamesNolan, "Jesus Now: Hogwash and Holy Water," Ramparts 10,no. 2 (August,1971): 20-26. 4. Rossinowuncovers a liberal Protestant and existentialist pulse, institutionally rooted in theYoung Mens Christian Association, inthe Austin, Texas, chapter ofSDS. See Douglas Rossinow,ThePolitics ofAuthenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, andthe New Left in America (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1998).

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5. Onthe origins of the New Left, see James Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huronto the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). Rossinow criticizes whathe sees as Millerspreoccupation with participatory democracy and his story of declensionin whichparticipatory democracy fades into existentialism anddespair. Instead,Rossinow rebuts, existentialism andthe "search for authenticity" should be seen ascentral tothe New Left from its origins. For Rossinow s close study of the Austin, Texas, chapterof SDS, which features large doses of liberal Protestant existentialist literature andrhetoric, seeRossinow, The Politics ofAuthenticity. 6. DaleSuderman, "AFailure of Liberalism," Post-American 4,no. 8 (October-November 1975):24. 7.John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory ofEmployment, Interest andMoney (Cambridge, MA:Macmillan, 1936); Alan Brinkley, TheEnd of Reform: New Deal Liberalism inRecession andWar (New York: Vintage, 1995), 66. 8. "PeoplesChristian Coalition- Newsletter No.1," July 1971 in Box VII7, Folder "Peoples ChristianCoalition- Trinity," Sojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collec- tions. 9. JackSparks, "The American Condition" in Box2, Christian World Liberation Front Collection,Graduate Theological Union Archives, Berkeley, California; Herb McMullan, "Manand Technocracy," Post-American 1,no. 2 (Winter1971): 4-5. 10.Gerald Vandezande, "Blazing the Trail toward the New Prosperity," Vanguard (December 1971):6. 11."The Revolutionary Catechism," Right On 1, no. 17 (27 October 1970): 2. 12.Bill Kallio, "Price of Progress Too High; No Need for SST," Wheaton Record 93, no. 14 (29 January1971): 4. 13.William Pannell, "Evangelicals and the Social Crisis," Post-American 3,no. 7 (October 1974):11. 14.Jacque Ellul, a French Christian philosopher, wasinstrumental inmediating forevangelical radicalsthe New Left s critique oftechnology. SeeJacques Ellul, The Technological Society (NewYork: Knopf, 1964), 25; , Perspectives onOur Age (New York: Seabury Press,1981). 15.Boyd Reese, "Structure ofPower," Post-American 3,no. 1 (January 1974): 8. 16.Bill Kallio, "Price of Progress Too High," 4. 17.Bob Ross to , 25 August 1973, in Folder "1973 Chicago Declaration Planning," EvangelicalsforSocial Action Archives, Philadelphia. 18.Bob Goudwaard, "Have Our Gods Failed Us?" Vanguard (August-September 1972):3- Alsosee Ira Edwards, "The 23rd Psalm of Scientism," The Other Side 14, no. 3 (March

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1978):27. 19., "Invisible Empire," Post-American 2,no. 5 (November-December1973):1. 20.William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy ofAmerican Diplomacy (Cleveland, OH: World PublishingCompany, 1959). 21.Gabriel Kolko, The Roots of American Foreign Policy : An Analysis ofPower and Purpose (Boston:Beacon Press, 1969); Merlo J.Pusey, The U.S.A. Astride the Globe: An Examination ofAmericas Role of Policeman tothe World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971); "Bibliography: PeoplesChristian Coalition, November 1971," Box VII7, Folder "Peoples Christian Coalition Trinity,"inSojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collections. 22.Jill Shook, "Vietnam Today," Right On 6, no. 1 (July- August 1974): 7- 23."Echo from a Politico," Right On 1, no. 14 (1 May 1970). 24.If Jacques Ellul mediated New Left social thought tothe evangelical left, Richard Barnet, a formergovernment bureaucrat who attended Church of the Savior in Washington and servedas a contributingeditor to the Post-Americany translated New Left critiques of Americandiplomacy. See Richard J.Barnet, Roots of War (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 3-23;Barnet, Intervention andRevolution: The United States in the Third World (New York:World Publishing Co., 1968); William Stringfellow, "Open Letter toJimmy Carter," Sojourners5,no. 8 (October1976): 7-8. 25.See Box 68, Folder 7, "Urbana 1961-1974," InterVarsity Collection, Billy Graham Center Archives;Joe Roos, "American Civil Religion," Post-American 1,no. 3 (Spring1972): 8. 26."Political Interpretations ofJohns Apocalypse," inBox XIi, Folder "Post- American Letters/ Memos/Infofrom the Office," Sojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collections; JimWallis, "Evangelism inBabylon," Post-American 1,no. 4 (Summer1972). 27.Quoted in Bert Witvoet, "Jubilee 1979- Visited and Enjoyed," Vanguard 9,no. 3 (May- June 1979):27. 28.Carl F. H. Henry,"Equality by Boycott," Christianity Today 11, no. 12 (17 March 1967): 27. 29.Stan Shank, "Students Express Concern in Vietnam Demonstration," Wheaton Record 89,no. 29 (4 May1967): 5. 30.Carol Anne Galvin, "Students Peacefully Protest Wheaton College ROTC Image," Wheaton DailyJournal (14 May 1971). In vertical file "ROTC," Wheaton College Archives. 31.Paul Fromer, "The Berkeley Affair Brush Fire," HIS: Magazine 25, no. 9 (June1965): 39-40. 32.For examples ofhard-edged protests and of Jesus portrayed asa revolutionary, seepamphlets in21:41: Christian World Liberation Front 1969-1971, Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library;Box 38, Folder "Christian World Liberation Front," New Left Collection, Hoover

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InstitutionArchives, Stanford, California; Arnie Bernstein, "Captured by the King," RightOn 4, no. 5 (November1972): 1; Jim Moore, "Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?" Post-American1,no. 2 (Winter1972): 13. 33."Peace Service, Seminars, City Rally Highlight Calvin Moratorium Activity," Chimes 64, no.11 (17 October 1969): 1; "The Dean Burns in Effigy During Ad Hoc Demonstration," CalvinChimes 63 (25 April 1969): 3. 34."Funeral March Highlights Moratorium Observance," Wheaton Record 92, no. 10 (21 November1969): 1. "ROTC Protest Goes Smoothly; Dr.Armerding Holds Front Campus Talk,"Wheaton Record 93, no. 27 (14 May 1971): 2. 35.Sharon Gallagher interview, 7 July 2006. 36."Why Your Landlord Makes Money" in Box 21, Folder 41, "Christian World Liberation Front1969-1971," Social Protests Collection, Bancroft Library. 37.Jack N. Sparks, Gods Forever Family (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974), 115-21. 38.Daryl Lembke, "Christian Front in Berkeley," LosAngeles Timesy 8 February 1970. The OtherSides Richard Taylor similarly suggested that evangelical radicals join an already existinggroup such as theUnited Farm Workers. See Taylor, "Manual for Nonviolent DirectAction," Post-American 3,no. 8 (November1974): 24. 39.Bill Squires interview, 5 September 2006; Plowman, The Jesus Movement inAmerica , 70-73;"SDS Confronted atWest Coast Conference," FreeWater (8October 1970): 1, copy inChristian World Liberation Front Collection, Graduate Theological Union Archives. 40. SeeFolder 21, "Berkeley Liberation Program," June 1969, in Social Protest Collection, BancroftLibrary. 41."New Berkeley Liberation Program"; ".. . And After This War?" Folder 21:41, Social Protest Collection,Bancroft Library. 42.Gallagher quoted in Edward B. Fiske, "A 'Religious Woodstock' Draws 75,000," New York Times,16 June 1972, 19. 43."Peoples Christian Coalition - Newsletter No.4," May 1972, in Box VII7, Folder "Peoples ChristianCoalition Trinity," Sojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collections; Fiske,"A 'Religious Woodstock' Draws 75,000," 19; Richard K.Taylor, "Hopeful Stirrings amongEvangelicals," TheWitness , copy in Box IV3, Folder "News Releases and Post- American,"Sojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collections; Peter Ediger, "Explo'72," Post-American (Fall1972): 13; Marlin VanElderen, "Explo '72 and Campus Crusade,"Reformed Journal 22, no. 6 (July-August, 1972): 18. 44.O.M. Collective, Organizers Manual (New York: Bantam Books, 1971). See "Bibliography: People'sChristian Coalition," November 1971, Box VII7, Folder 6, "People'sChristian CoalitionTrinity," Sojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collections.

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45.Patricia Camp, "Group Occupies Apartments inHousing Protest," Washington Post, 16 September1978, Ci. 46.Sojourners newsletter, Summer 1978, in Folder"Sojo Community," Boxes VI1-VI3, SojournersCollection, Wheaton College Special Collections; Wes Michaelson, "Theater atthe Capitol," Sojourners 9,no. 1 (January 1980): 20-21. 47."Community Statement," BoxVI, Folder 1,"Sojourners Community? Sojourners Collection, WheatonCollege Archives. 48."Inter- Varsity Christian Fellowship- UMSL Chapter Position on Campus Disorders," in Box21, Folder 2, "Student unrest/dissent (1960s)," Inter Varsity Collection, Billy Graham CenterArchives, Wheaton, Illinois. 49."Report of the Task Force on Evangelical Nonviolence," Box 2, Folder 12, "Center for BiblicalSocial Concern proposal; correspondence September 1974-Sept. 1976," Evangelicals forSocial Action Collection, Billy Graham Center Archives. Also see Ronald J. Sider, "ReconcilingourEnemies: A Biblical Study on Nonviolence," Sojourners 8,no. 1 (January 1979):14-17. 50.Taylor, "Manual for Nonviolent Direct Action," 24-29. 51.Richard K. Taylor, "The Peacemakers: Faith and Obedience through Nonviolent Direct Action,"Post-American 4,no. 8 (October-November1975):16-21. 52.Ronald J.Sider, "Blockade: A Guide to Non-Violent Intervention," Christianity Today 22 (10February 1978): 45-46. 53.C. WrightMills, "A Pagan Sermon to the Christian ," Post-American 3,no. 9 (December1974): 12-15. This was a reprintofMills's speech text originally published in the8 March1958, issue of The Nation. 54.In their insistence onconservative doctrine and culturally traditional values, fundamentalist evangelicalsdistinguished themselves from liberal mainliners inthe early twentieth century. Thenext generation of"new evangelicals," who were still fundamentalist doctrinally, soughttoseparate themselves from fundamentalists intheir engagement ofsecular culture. Evangelicalradicals, inturn, critiqued their "new evangelical" parents for not carrying theirreforming tendencies totheir logical conclusion. On the Manichean worldview of fundamentalists,seeMarsden, Fundamentalism andAmerican Culture , 211. 55.Paul Fromer, "The Berkeley Affair Brush Fire," 38-40, 44-45. 56.Seerveld, "Christian Faith for Today," Vanguard (January-February 1972):9. 57.David L. Chappell,A Stoneof Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (ChapelHill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2004). On SNCC as thesoul of the NewLeft, see Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books,1987), 129.

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58.On the religious rhetoric ofthe , seeCharles Marsh, The Beloved Community:HowFaith Shapes (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 2-3; Chappell, Stoneof Hope, 87-104. 59.Quoted in Marsh, Beloved Community, 5,170-172. On Perkins's beating, see "Hotheads andProfessionals," Time, 10 August 1970. 60. Quotedin Michaelson, "Richard Barnet on Multinational Corporations" Sojourners 5, no.2 (February1976), 17. 61.Jim Wallis and Robert A. Sabath,"In Quest of Discipleship," Post-American 2,no. 3 (May-June1973): 3. 62.Allan C. Carlson,"Radical Evangelicals and Their Anticapitalist Crusade," Gazette Telegraph, 8 November 1981, 11AA. 63.Jim Wallis, "Pilgrimage ofa Peacemaker," Post-American 5,no. 3 (March1976): 5. 64.Robert A. Sabath, "Pauls View of the State," Post-American 3,no. 3 (April1974): 8-11. For moreon the "powers," seeJim Wallis, Agenda for Biblical People (San Francisco: Harper & Row,1984), 60-79.. 65.William Stringfellow, Christians and Other Aliens in a StrangeLand (Waco, TX: Word Books,1976), 154-55. 66."Political Interpretations ofJohns Apocalypse" inBox XIi, Folder, "Post- American- Internal,"Sojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collections. 67.Milliken, SoLong , Sweet Jesus , 168. 68.Lee A. Wyatt, "Discipleship Workshops Newsletter," 15April 1981, Folder "Discipleship Workshops,"ESAArchives; Dale W. Brown, "The Powers: A Bible Study," Post-American 3,no. 1 (January 1974): 3. 69.Joe Roos, "The Arrogance ofPower," Post-American 4,no. 2 (February1975): 6-7. 70.Julia Duin, "A Most Unusual Magazine," Washington Post, 25 December 1976, copy in BoxIV3, Folder "News Releases and Post- American," Sojourners Collection, Wheaton CollegeSpecial Collections. 71.Wallis, Agenda for Biblical People , 132. 72.Quoted in Carol Langston, "Campus Rebel Finds New 'Revolt,'" Tulsa Tribune ,26 March i97i>5- 73.Quoted in Milliken, SoLong, Sweet Jesus , 13. 74.Quote from Peoples Christian Coalition newsletter No. 4, May 1972, in Folder "News Releasesand Post- American," Box IV3, Sojourners Collection, Wheaton College Special Collections. 75.Marsh, Beloved Community , 168. 76.Sparks, Gods Forever Family , 115-17.

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77.Ron Sider, "Resist but Don t Rebel: Sometimes WeMust Disobey the Government toObey God,"Light and Life (February 1983): 9-10. Copy of article in Folder "1983," Evangelicals forSocial Action Archives. 78.Arthur G. Gish,The New Left and Christian Radicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing,1970), 27, 49, 57, 66, 67, 71, 119. 79.Gish, New Left and Christian Radicalism, 46.Bill Milliken echoed Gish's critique, explain- ingto Maoists in the late 1960s that "following Jesus requires new structures, butin the contextofmy becoming a new person." See Milliken, SoLong, Sweet Jesus , 156. 80.Boyd Reese, for example, used the text in a courseon Christiansocial involvement hetaught at Trinity College. See Reese, "Is Sojourners Marxist? An Analysis ofRecent Charges,"TSF Bulletin 8 (November-December 1984):14-17. 81.Ed Spivey Jr. interview, 22June 2005. 82.Sharon Gallagher interview, 7 July 2006. 83.Richard Mouw interview, 12July 2006. 84.Wallis, Faith Works: Lessons from the Life of an Activist Preacher (New York: Random House,2000) 11-13; Jim Wallis, "The Movemental Church," Post-American 1,no. 2 (Winter 1972):2-3. 85.Quoted in Carol Langston, "Campus Rebel Finds New 'Revolt,'" 6B, 86.Os Guinness, The Dust of Death: A Critiqueofthe Establishment andthe Counter Culture, andthe Proposal for a ThirdWay (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973) ii. Guin- nesswrote, "The New Lefts great refusal' ofthe values, principles, ideals, and goals of a bureaucraticsociety was actually based on the same 'humanist premises' that it presumed toreject." 87.Bill Kallio, "An American Tragedy: The Generation ofCynics," Wheaton Record 93, no. 6 (November,1970): 4. 88.Milliken, SoLong, Sweet Jesus , 100. 89.Antony W. Alumkal, "American Evangelicalism inthe Post-Civil Rights Era: A Racial FormationTheory Analysis," Sociology ofReligion 65, no. 3 (Fall2004): 200. 90. "ABrief History of the Revolution," in Box 2, "CWLF and Redeemer King Church," ChristianWorld Liberation Front Collection, Graduate Theological Union Archives. 91.See Reese, "Is Sojourners Marxist?" See Jack Newfield, A Prophetic Minority (New York: NewAmerican Library, 1966). 92.Histories ofradicalism atelite American universities dominated early New Left historiog- raphy.See Max Heirich, Spiral of Conflict: Berkeley, 1964 (New York: Columbia University Press,1971); Irwin Unger, The Movement: A History ofthe American New Left, 1959-1972 (NewYork: Harper and Row, 1974); W. J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War: The 1960s (New

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York:Oxford University Press, 1989); George R. Vickers, The Formation ofthe New Left: TheEarly Years (Lexington, MA: D. C.Heath, 1975); Gitlin, The Sixties ; Miller, Democracy Isin the Streets. Asecond wave, to which I seek to contribute, explores New Left impulses onnon-elite campuses. See Kenneth J.Heineman, Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at AmericanState Universities inthe Vietnam Era (New York: New York University Press, 1993);Rossinow, Politics ofAuthenticity. Ina particularly influential article, Wini Breines pointedout the organizational affinities ofauthors of the first wave, arguing that their formeraffiliations withSDS shaped their narratives ina necessarily partisan manner. See Breines,"Whose New Left?" Journal ofAmerican History 75, no. 2 (1988):528-45. 93.Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973). 94.Jim Wallis, "Reflections," inThe Chicago Declaration , ed. Ronald J. Sider (Carol Stream, IL:Creation House, 1974), 142. 95.". . . AndAfter This War?" and "Proposed Social and Economic Foundations fora Christian Society,"Box 21, Folder 41, Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library. 96.Van Gosse, "A Movement ofMovements: TheDefinition andPeriodization ofthe New Left," inA CompaniontoPost-1945 America , eds. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenweig (Maiden,MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 277-302. 97.Amy Sullivan, The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap (NewYork: Scribner, 2008); Andrea Smith, Native Americans and the : The GenderedPolitics ofUnlikely Alliances (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

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