In her new memoir about her husband and herself An Unfinished Love Story, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recalls that President Lyndon Johnson in March 1965 needed a voting rights speech to Congress and the nation written within 24 hours. Scores of marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama had just been beaten by state troopers wielding clubs and bullwhips, as the horrified nation watched. LBJ did not want distractions from his Great Society agenda. But he realized he now must speak and act, specifically for voting rights.
An old Texas crony of LBJ’s had been asked to write the speech the night before. When LBJ learned the next morning, he responded indignantly. “You did what?!’ Don’t you know that a liberal Jew has his hands on the pulsebeat of America? And you assigned this speech to a Texas public relations man?”
The “liberal Jew” whom LBJ wanted to write the speech was Richard Goodwin, who had worked closely for John Kennedy, then LBJ, and later Robert Kennedy. By day’s end he wrote one of LBJ’s most famous speeches, which began: “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.” It’s best remembered for, “And we shall overcome,” prompting Martin Luther King Jr, watching on television, to cry. And it concluded:
Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says–in Latin– “God has favored our undertaking.” God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.
The speech led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ensuring the franchise for long disenfranchised southern blacks. Richard Goodwin, the “liberal Jew,” was one of the most famous presidential speech writers, renowned for his rhetorical music. His prose was effective because he was deeply in love with the beauty of America and could sing its melodies from memory. From his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, surrounded by American Revolutionary War sites, he often sang songs and recited poetry about great moments in American history. He very much, as LBJ knew, had his “hands on the pulsebeat of America.”
Thanks to Goodwin’s speech, the Voting Rights Act, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, transformed America, guaranteeing by law what the Declaration of Independence had claimed about human equality. The expectation of human equality in law and in society is unusual in human history but emerged from the Gospel insight that God loves all persons equally. It is especially premised on God’s special concern for persons at the bottom of society who are disdained for their low rank.
As British historian Tom Holland, author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, noted: “That the Son of God, born of a woman, and sentenced to the death of a slave, had perished unrecognized by his judges, … could not help but lodge in [one’s] consciousness a visceral and momentous suspicion: that God was closer to the weak than to the mighty.”
American democracy, with time, resolved that the weak merited voting rights no less than the mighty.
Does this insight make America a “Christian” nation? Our ideals and laws would be impossible without Christianity, interpreted especially through Anglo Protestantism. But Christianity has always understood that God, whose image is carried by all people, does not work only through orthodox faithful Christians. Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and its expectation of human equality, was then at best a deist. Others of the Founding Fathers were less than orthodox, not to mention many other heroes across the pageant of America’s unfolding story.
Sometimes the greatest insights about America’s character and beauty come from non-Christians and non-religious people who, by God’s grace, still hear the music of human dignity and democracy. And sometimes orthodox Christians have been partly deaf to this music. This insight that God’s works through all kinds of people, often unexpectedly, explains, partly, why America’s Founders did not institute the United States as a legally Christian nation. As President Washington famously told the Jews of Providence, Rhode Island:
All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
In the speech that a “liberal Jew” wrote for LBJ against bigotry, the President told Congress and America: “For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great government – this government of the greatest Nation on earth.”
Johnson said: “And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.” And then quoting Jesus from the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, in the speech written by the “liberal Jew,” the President asked: “For with a country as with a person, ‘What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”
May this question that Jesus posed always stand before America’s conscience.
Comment by David Connon on August 31, 2024 at 8:46 pm
Mark Tooley, this article was powerful, thoughtful, and educational. Thank you for writing it.
Comment by David on September 1, 2024 at 10:05 am
“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”—G. Washington 1790
“The conscience of men ought to remain free and unshackled. Let everyone remain free, as long as he is modest, moderate, his political conduct irreproachable, and as long as he does not offend others or oppose the government. “—Rebuke of Peter Stuyvesant by the Dutch West India Company, 1663.
Stuyvesant had earlier been rebuked for his proposed ban on Jews settling in what is now the New York City area. At about the same time, the inhabitants of a small village, now Flushing, NY, reminded him in 1657 of their charter which allowed freedom of conscience which they declared extended to “Jews, Turks, and Egyptians…and all.” Washington visited Flushing in 1790.
Comment by Randy on September 1, 2024 at 5:57 pm
I wholeheartedly agree that the founding ideal that all men are created equal is the pole star for American law and the animating idea that made the USA unique among the nations of the world.
But while this ideal runs through the length of Christianity, no matter how much it may have been betrayed by imperfect humans, it is wrong to say it has a Christian origin.
In the very first verses of the Jewish scriptures, which tell how God created our physical world, we read that God also laid the moral foundation of the world by making human beings in the image and likeness of God.
When a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do for salvation, and Jesus asks him how he reads the law, the man quotes the Jewish Torah: love God fully and love your neighbor—and Jesus tells him he is right.
The whole Sermon on the Mount is a lesson on the deeper meaning of the Jewish Torah.
So when we Christians try to take credit for the Jewish teachings of the Jewish teacher we recognize as the Jewish messiah, we make the error about which Paul warned the Gentile Christians in Rome, who forgot they were a wild branch grafted by God’s grace onto the ancient tree of Judaism.
Calling Richard Goodwin a liberal Jew (as opposed to, say, a faithful Jew) implies that his virtue comes from sharing a Christian value. It is probably more accurate to describe Christians as “liberal Jews.”
Comment by MikeB on September 2, 2024 at 9:28 am
Randy,
It’s sad how you attend a church yet have no knowledge of God. Your words betray someone who does not think of God as real and Lord of your life.
The Old Testament is not owned by the Jewish religion, it is owned by God, the same God who came down to earth, and died for our sins. He is literally The Word made flesh.
Jesus Christ is the God of Abraham Issac and Jacob. He is not a Jewish teacher, He is David’s Lord, He is the Messiah, the fulfillment of His promises to Abraham.
You fall into heretical thought and action when you pretend that the words of Christ in the New Testament are different than the words of God in the Old Testament.
You pretend that your Church is Bible believing, but you don’t even know what that means.
Jesus is not just some moral teacher, He is the I AM.
Comment by Randy on September 2, 2024 at 10:45 am
Yes, I profess that Jesus is the I Am who was in the beginning with God and who brought the world into being. I view John’s prologue as a statement of belief in this way.
I also recognize that the Word chose to become flesh in the person of a Jewish man who, according to the gospels, was called rabbi (or teacher) more than any other term of address. He taught from the Jewish scriptures. He told the Samaritan woman at the well, “Salvation comes from the Jews.”
It is from Judaism that Christians inherited the idea that our love for God is expressed in love for neighbor. It is from Judaism that Christians inherited the understanding that human beings are created in the likeness of God, which gave rise to the American ideal of equality in our nation’s founding text. As Paul explained it, we Gentiles should be grateful that God took us, as wild branches, and grafted us onto the ancient tree God planted.
So I’m very comfortable talking about Judeo-Christian values because that term acknowledges our Jewish roots.
But I will challenge the suggestion I often see from Christians that those values originated with Christianity. Mark Tooley’s otherwise solid post gave off a whiff of this implication—that Richard Goodwin was a good Jew because he reflected American Christian values, rather than the reality that he was reflecting traditional Jewish values.
It is also probably worth noting here that Jefferson, who authored those founding words from the Judeo-Christian tradition—“self-evident truths” that had never been part of any nation’s avowed reason for being—was not a Christian in any sense that we would recognize today. He was more what you accuse me of being—someone who saw Jesus only as a teacher of ethics. That’s why, in the version of the Bible he created, he cut out all of the miracle stories.
Comment by MikeB on September 2, 2024 at 11:02 am
Randy,
People called Jesus Teacher, what did he call himself, Son of Man, and I AM, again and again he uses that.
I am the vine, I am he, I am the light of the world, I am the good shepherd, I am the gate, I am the way and the truth and the life,I am the resurrection and the life, I am the bread of life, Before Abraham was born, I am!
Again it is from God that we inherit things in the Old Testament. God’s promises to Abraham are still in effect to the Jewish people, God is still working through the Jewish people. Our Judeo-Christian values are derived from God, not from Christianity or Judaism, they both have been gifted his word.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
We are grafted onto God.
You assume cultural goodness, not Divine commandment.
Comment by Randy on September 2, 2024 at 12:40 pm
The notion of “Cultural goodness” is what I’m
arguing against. Too many Christians claim it for themselves because they recognize Jesus as the messiah and most Jews do not. And they have used this for nearly 2,000 years to denounce Jews as Christ-killers and to persecute them—instead of recognizing they worship the same God and share the same values and ethical beliefs.
Comment by David on September 2, 2024 at 3:12 pm
“Son of man” is merely a common Aramaic expression for a male person, dude, or whatever.
“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good except God alone. Luke 18:19
“You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” John 14:28
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Matthew 24:36
There was a reason why the nature of Jesus was much debated in the early church.
Comment by MikeB on September 2, 2024 at 4:20 pm
Randy, I’m not sure where Methodists specifically had an antisemitism problem, but we agree that it is not of God. The left holds significantly more antisemitism right now than the right.
David,
Yes, Son of Man is a generic term as I referenced
Luke 18:19 is a cute play on words, he it pointing out that He is God.
John 14:28 yes, μείζων represents larger, vaster, greater in the Greek, the early church often debated the term.
Matthew 24:36 is another one of those terms that lead to long debates about homoousion, as human language falls short of describing God as you know.
Comment by John on September 3, 2024 at 5:39 pm
American political tradition is like a stew that had been brewing for millennia. Christianity was certainly an ingredient and may be one we can most readily taste, but it not only ingredient that gave us liberty. Also mixed into the pot were the works of Plato and Aristotle, the democratic legacy of Athens, the republican traditions of ancient Rome, the Magna Carta, English Common Law and parliamentarism, the writings of John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu. Even Native American forms of government played a role. Indeed, the US Constitution’s unique concern for state’s rights probably owns more to the example of Iroquois Confederacy than any European models of that time. I’m all for us acknowledging the influence of Judeo-Christian concepts and ideas in American political tradition, just not at the expense of forgetting everything else that went into the pot.
Comment by MikeB on September 3, 2024 at 7:54 pm
John,
Agreed, Beyond just the first order impact of the Iroquois Confederacy, Las Casas’s experiences with the natives tribes in the “New World” led to much of our modern human rights.
Comment by Randy on September 5, 2024 at 11:42 am
Mike B wrote:
Randy, I’m not sure where Methodists specifically had an antisemitism problem, but we agree that it is not of God. The left holds significantly more antisemitism right now than the right.
Response: I hope we at least can agree that monolithic terms like “the left” or “the right” aren’t very useful. Most American Jews would fall under what you would broadly label as “the left,” and a substantial number of them are broadly supportive of Israel’s government and Zionism as a principle. Meanwhile, it makes no sense to hang an anti-Semite label on the many American Jews who have been protesting alongside the “Free Palestine” crowds (some of whom are clearly antisemitic).
In any event, for the purpose of this discussion I am speaking not about political leanings but of Christians generally (and not Methodists in particular). Last time I looked, several years ago, the UM Social Principles basically said that God made an original covenant with the Jewish people, and God goes not break covenants. That’s about where I’m at.
But I vividly remember when the president of the Southern Baptist Convention said, “God does not hear the prayer of The Jew.” That’s one of the most blasphemous things I ever heard, and to my knowledge they have never repented of that.
Many, many Christians I have met, while not quite that extreme in their views, think that Jews must specifically embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior or face eternal torment. And they have been taught (with an unfortunate assist from Matthew’s Gospel) that Jews, rather than Romans, were (and are) “Christ-killers.”
That belief, which needs to be combatted everywhere, led to 2,000 years of persecution by Christians. Most Christians in my experience have little sense of this beyond the Holocaust. They don’t know about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or how Henry Ford distributed millions of copies of this hateful propaganda. They don’t know much about the violent pogroms in Russia. They don’t know about how Spain expelled all Jews who would not convert in 1492–or how the same thing happened in 13th-century England. They don’t know how Jews across Europe were blamed and murdered for the Black Plague in the mid-1300s. They don’t learn that when Christian crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099–ostensibly to free it from Muslim infidels—they murdered all the region’s Jews, who had been living peacefully under Muslim rule. And they certainly don’t learn how this level of anti-semitism got baked into Christian practice (in defiance of Christian doctrine) from an early time.
So when I see the Jewishness of our Christian belief—in the case of this blog post, as it applies to the equality of all human beings—discounted or ignored, I see seeds of antisemitism being nurtured, however unintentionally (and I have no doubt it was unintentional) by the writer.
Comment by MikeB on September 7, 2024 at 2:40 pm
Randy,
I can agree on that, I think “most” of our current generation of Christians are blissfully unaware of the history of previous religious leaders that were in for example, but not just limited to the Southern Baptists. I agree that the Southern Baptists especially in the 1980s had a sever problem.
I know that the Western Church as a whole has worked hard to get rid of that. Southern Baptists are now rock solid supporters of Israel, you might claim that you aren’t a fan of that, but it’s a world of difference from where they were.
For the broader right (political) wing of politics (Which is semi aligned with Conservative Christianity), yes there is dog whispering and some groups that would love to revisit what was buried, e.g. Tucker Carlson. But their hero Donald Trump’s daughter converted to Judaism.
But on the left , including the Christian Left(Mainline), you have much more overt anti antisemitism. I’m not just talking about the Black Hebrew movement, which is analogous to far right groups like the KKK.
I am talking about the fact that churches on the left (Mainline) are far more likely to agree with the same blatant antisemitism that was on the right 40 years ago.
https://www.jns.org/how-intersectional-myths-killed-the-black-jewish-alliance/
https://boundlessisrael.org/paper/66/details
Intersectionality as adopted by the left has opened the door to a lot of antisemitic behaviors.
Finally when you state: “Many, many Christians I have met, while not quite that extreme in their views, think that Jews must specifically embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior or face eternal torment”
Christ said that he is the way the truth and the life, no one may come to the father but through Him. I know you want to avoid this, but all of our wonderful friends will be permanently separated from God if they of their own free will choose to be.
There is nothing antisemitic about that, we believe that ALL people must embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior to be saved. There is a difference between those who follow the Jewish religion, and those who are of Jewish descent/ethnicity/culture (who are of a variety of religions).
Those who are of Jewish Faith pray the the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, so God obviously hears their prayers, He hears every human no matter how little they want Him to hear them.
Those who are Children of Israel (the person not the place), maintain the promises of God that He made to Abraham, Issac and Jacob.
Bari Weiss has a great article on this topic.
https://www.thefp.com/p/bari-weiss-the-war-on-our-history
Comment by MikeB on September 7, 2024 at 6:14 pm
Randy,
Hold on, do you or do you not believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to The Father but through Him?
Comment by Randy on September 16, 2024 at 3:49 pm
I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus’ initial call to his disciples did not involve creeds or doctrine. It was simply, “Follow me.” So that is what I try, stumbling, to do.
If literally no one comes to the Father except through Jesus, then why would Jesus say that no one can know the Son except the Father (as quoted in both Matthew and John)? And what do we do about Abraham, Jacob and Moses, who encountered God without a separate revelation of Jesus as the Son?
The problem with using your one verse so sweepingly as a proof text is that, if taken literally, it consigns the patriarchs to hell because they could not possibly have come to the Father without the presence of Jesus as the Son. And if you point out, as Christians believe, that Jesus was present with God from the beginning, then the literal English of “no one comes to the Father but by me” becomes a tautology that makes no sense. No one comes to God except through God? Um, okay.
So, let me ask you: Are Jews consigned to hell unless they profess Jesus as Lord? Does that include David, Moses and Elijah?