Politics In the Choir Loft
By proclaiming 1983 to be ÛÏThe Year of the Bible,Û President Reagan presumably means to extend the theme of economic recession into the political and intellectual theaters of operation. When he released his proclamation to a national prayer breakfast, Reagan observed that the Bible holds within its pages ÛÏall the answers to ail the problems that mankind has ever known.Û</br></br>Last year, Americans bought $170 million worth of Bibles, which suggests that Reagan may have shaped His proclamation to fit the desperate wish for simple answers to the dilemmasSof the age. Although the Bible may provide certain truths to all the problems of mankind, revelation is also available by a reading of the Koran, the Confu-cian Analects, the Homeric poems, PlatoÛªs Dialogues and the canon. of ShakespeareÛªs plays. The problems] to which the Bible speaks have to do with the government of menÛªs souls, not with the government of states.</br></br>What, then, does Reagan mean by his proclamation? Surely he cannot suppose that a modern nation-state can dress itself in the rags of Christian humility. ChristÛªs teachings do violence both to the spirit and the flesh of capitalism^ Were Reagan to attempt putting the gospels into effect, he would end by forcing the banks to give up the practice of usury and obliging the Pentagon to beat its missiles into plowshares.</br></br>Apparently it is not enough that the country in many ways has begun to resemble the industrial ruin of thp 1930s. The president proposes to conduct the nation still farther backward in time, roughly to the period between 600 B.C. and 100 A.D.</br></br>The question remains as to which of these 700 years the president thinks most suitable for a safe return. Despite the reactionary nature of this administration, it is unlikely that he would find much solace in the earlier years of the BibleÛªs composition. In the days of the Deuteronomist, the kingdom of Israel was very small and no match for the Assyrian empire. When capacity for destruction was measured in chariots, the Assyrians held a massive advantage m the Middle Eastern arms race.