February 1987
American Purpose
Issue 1, Volume 2

Publication Date: February 1, 1987
Posted: Sunday, February 2, 1987

This issue includes 'A Question of Witness'; 'Once More, With Feeling'; 'Coalitions for Democracy'; 'Evangelical Breakthrough'; 'Open Mikes'; and 'Ike Revisited'.


In This Issue :

A QUESTION OF WITNESS
One of the most extraordinary transformations in contemporary American public life has been the radical change in the ideological orientation of mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic church leaders as they enter the world affairs arena. Eight themes are now regularly displayed in the foreign policy pronouncements of the National Council of Churches and the sundry religious-activist agencies, and in many of the statements of the United States Catholic Conference. These themes, one suspects, would not be happily received by Reinhold Niebuhr, or by John Courtney Murray, the great American Catholic public theologian.  [More]

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING
The rush to disinvestment in South Africa proceeds apace, now led by such American corporate giants as General Motors, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Kodak. No doubt there are mixed motivations in these decisions. But the bottom line remains: the dream of the Reverend Leon Sullivan, that corporate pressure within South Africa would accelerate the breakdown of the apartheid system and generate pressures for peaceful, democratic reform, is fast fading.  [More]

COALITIONS FOR DEMOCRACY
Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch are not frequently found on the same side of controverted issues. This past September, however, they joined with Senators Bill Bradley, Richard Lugar, Daniel Moynihan, and Warren Rudman in co-authoring a "Dear Colleague" letter to fellow senators, in support of the FY 1987 appropriation for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).  [More]

EVANGELICAL BREAKTHROUGH
Not all is dross in the religious community's approach to the linked problems of peace, security, and freedom, the currents of thought identified in this issue's opening editorial notwithstanding. The Catholic bishops of the United States, for example, have become more vocal in support of the Nicaraguan Catholic Church since the expulsion of Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega from his country. A lay group, Presbyterians for Democracy and Religious Freedom, has challenged its denomination's most recent study paper, "Presbyterians and Peacemaking: Are We Now Called to Resistance?" which asks whether massive civil disobedience may now be necessary against "... government policies [that] have become so possessed by the forces of destruction that they must be repossessed for the ethically compelling values of a just peace." (For the uninitiated, the government in question here is that lodged in Washington, D.C.)  [More]

OPEN MIKES
Washington, D.C., which gets abuzz over things large and small, was aflutter just after the November elections with another Charles Z. Wick flap. Mr. Wick is, of course, the director of the United States Information Agency and a close personal friend of President and Mrs. Reagan.  [More]

IKE REVISITED
AMERICAN PURPOSE is not intended to be penitential reading. Thus, from time to time, we want to share some of the lighter things crossing the editor's desk that have some bearing on the issues on which we chew in this forum.  [More]