“Harper’s” Editor Lewis Lapham Rejects God, Hates Christianity Upon Which America Was Founded


By John Lofton, Editor

“After three decades as editor [of “Harper’s” magazine], Lewis Lapham is moving on to take a very long view. He is starting a magazine on history.” – Report on “National Public Radio’s” program “Morning Edition,” 12/26/05.

I have no idea what, exactly, will be in Mr. Lapham’s new magazine. It doesn’t yet exist. But, in his “NPR” interview he seemed not overly-familiar with at least one important aspect of American history. For example, he complained that the “democratic idea” in our country is not strongly held or felt. He said, in part:”Democracy requires participation and it requires a literate, engaged citizenry. And I don’t think we have that….Democracy is about argument face to face. It’s people that come from different parts of the society and have different interests, points of view, and confront one another. But we’ve been losing that over the last 20 years.” But, of course, America is not a “democracy” – never has been, is not now. Our Founders gave us a representative, Constitutional, Republic.

But, Lapham’s obliviousness to this important aspect of American history is one of his lesser shortcomings (more about this in a few paragraphs). And hearing his voice on the radio reminded me of an interview I did with him about three years ago.

Now, three years ago, I knew then what I know now – there is a palpable hatred for the God of the Bible in our country. This is not news to any discerning observer. But seldom had I seen such God-hate expressed so blatantly and explicitly as at a forum at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco (4/18/02), a forum co-sponsored by The Independent Institute and “Harper’s” magazine. The topic was: “Understanding America’s Terrorist Crisis: What Should Be Done?” Those participating in this discussion were: Barton J. Bernstein, History Professor, Stanford University; Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow, The Independent Institute; Thomas Gale Moore, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Lewis H. Lapham, Editor, “Harper’s” magazine; Gore Vidal, novelist.

At one point, when the subject of restoring our country comes up, Lapham asks: “So, what do we do, is the point.” The transcript shows these following exchanges:

Vidal ( a homosexual): “Pray.”

(Laughter.)

Lapham: “But to whom? I mean not to —.

(Applause).

Vidal: “You pick yours, I pick mine.”

(Applause).

JOHN ASHCROFT ‘close in spirit to the disciples of Osama bin Laden?’ No, not at allLapham: “I mean when we get to the position of [John] Ashcroft. We now have our Attorney General on record, as recently as last February in Nashville, talking to 6,000 religious broadcasters, and explaining to them that our freedoms did not come to us from human hands. Not a document. Not a Declaration Of Independence. Our freedom is given to us by God, and he has also explained, when he goes around to speak to universities, that the United States has only one king, and that king is Jesus. And this is the Attorney General of the United States. And he’s also on record as saying that the only verdict that he is interested in is the verdict of eternity, not history.”

Vidal: “Hmm. That’s very good. Yeah, well. He’s not getting either.”

Lapham: “He is close in spirit to the disciples of Osama bin Laden, I would think.”

Vidal: “Oh, I’d think very like. I think they understand each other….”

A little later, Lapham turns to the panel noting that “they will show us the way out. Right?”

Vidal: “Into green pastures.”

Lapham: “We have been reduced to prayer over here. So maybe Barton Bernstein can offer us a more secular notion.”

Bernstein: “Well, actually, Lewis, I was hoping you were going to offer me the mandate of leading the group in prayer….”

(Laughter).

Later on, this question is asked: “You all seem to agree the United States in some way provokes attacks like 9/11. Do you think hatred from religious extremism plays a role?”

Vidal: “Yes. Very simply, yes. And I regard the greatest disaster to ever befall the West was monotheism.”

Applause.

Lapham: “In show business, there’s a saying that you always try to find a line to walk on. And it means I don’t think you get a better one than that.”

Vidal: “Particularly if there’s water.”

Applause.

Outraged by the mocking of Christ and Christianity by these fools, I called Lewis Lapham (10/31/02), interviewed him, and here’s the way it went (with some slight editing).

Q: Are you serious when you reject the idea that our freedoms come to us from God?

A: Oh, very much so. I think that is an appallingly bad idea.

Q: Where do our freedoms come from?

A: They come from the consent of the governed, from the writing of the Constitution, from human beings. The notion that they come from God is Osama bin Laden.

Q: I thought our rights are inalienable.

A: I think the phrase ‘consent of the governed’ is from the Declaration of Independence.

Q: But this document has no force of law.

A: Well, neither does God, believe me.

Q: Do you believe there are inalienable rights?

A: No.

Q: So, how are right and wrong determined, by majority vote?

A: By moral consensus. Morality is something human beings make.

Q: So, if enough people got together and thought that putting Jews into ovens was OK it would be OK?

A: No, I don’t think so.

Q: Why not?

HOMOSEXUAL GORE VIDAL mocks prayer, as does LaphamA: Because, again, it’s not a majority vote. There are, at least in my opinion, certain moral ideas, imperatives. I think it’s bad news to put anybody in an oven.

Q: But how do we determine what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’?

A: We uh, uh —.

Q: I agree with you about putting people into ovens because I’m a Christian and believe this is bad because God says murder is bad. Why do you think putting people into ovens is bad?

A: Because I think it is bad and evil.

Q: I understand. But what is the standard by which you judge things to be ‘bad’ or ‘evil’?

A: By my understanding of human freedom, human liberty, human beings, what I assign — I assign certainly the possibility of virtue to all people. And I think the universe is moral. I think that to act in a moral way makes people happy.

Q: But, you’re just giving me a watered-down, secular version of what the Bible says — that those who obey God are blessed, happy, and those who disobey God are cursed.

Q: But it’s another way of stating what the Greeks would say. It’s the same thing Sophocles or Aeschylus would be saying, what the Buddhists would say. In other words, when St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans says, essentially, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, what he is saying at that time —.

Q: Actually, Jesus said this not St. Paul.

A: All right. He has a letter to the Romans in which he is trying to distinguish, he’s trying to tell the Romans that they are obliged to accept the secular authority whatever the secular authority might be at the time, right? Whatever the secular government is, obey it, right?

Q: But, not blind obedience to Caesar, no.

A: If you’ll read the letter to the Romans I think that is exactly what you’ll find.

Q: But the precise distinction Christ was making was —.

A: But this was St. Paul not Christ.

Q: St. Paul did not say ‘render unto Caesar.’ Jesus did.

LAPHAM IGNORES crimes of his fellow God-haters like Red China’s mass murderer of millions Mao Tse-TungA: I accept that. But this was the sense of [St. Paul’s] letter.

Q: But, your problem, if I may say so, is you have no answer to the questions: What is God’s? What is Caesar’s? And you have no answer because you say there is no God!

A: No, there isn’t one. I don’t think so. It’s a lovely idea.

Q: What fascinates me about people like yourself is that even though you reject God and His Word you still have your list of commandments, your idea of what’s right and wrong and good and evil. But, when I press you on where right and wrong and good and evil come from, you have no answer that goes beyond your personal opinion.

A: It also comes out of history, observation, you know.

Q: But ‘history’ is such a mixed-bag of everything it does not tell us what’s right, wrong, good or evil. It’s like citing ‘nature.’

A: OK. I’ll take [Thomas] Paine’s position for which he was pilloried by John Adams. He (Paine) said God is in my own mind.

Q: Right — in your own mind. Walt Whitman call your office.

A: I’ll go with that.

Q: God is in your own mind. That sounds like Son of Sam. He had a little voice in his head telling him to murder people.

A: I’m sorry. You’ve got to face the differences between people.

Q: By the way, you should read Charles Norris Cochrane’s “Christianity And Classical Culture.” He documents in detail how Christianity triumphed and those Greeks failed miserably because they were Godless and tried to achieve permanent peace, freedom and security through politics.

A: I still think that’s the only way to do it. And the Christians were a thousand years of bloodshed. I would hardly say the Christians succeeded. I mean, that to me is insane.

Q: You mean they did not overcome and triumph over the Roman Empire?

A: Into what? Into a long record of massacre?

Q: The bloodiest century in recorded history was the 20th century. And the big blood-shedders were not Christians. They were Mao Tse-tung, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot — tell me which ones were Christians.

ADOLF HITLER ‘a Christian?’ Yep, that’s what Lapham says – and he’s seriousA: I think you got a Christian with Hitler.

Q: Oh, really?!

A: I think he would have thought of himself as a Christian.

Q: Well, now that’s a very different thing. Just because Hitler might of thought of himself as a Christian doesn’t mean he was one. The Lord said that Christians will be known by their fruits, by their actions. And He said that it will be known that one is a Christian if he obeys Christ’s commandments!

I can’t think of a whole lot of Christ’s commandments obeyed by Hitler….

A: We also killed three million Cambodians. The American Air Force did.

Q: Really?! Where did you get that number?

A: It’s a fairly common number.

Q: I thought there were only about three or four million people in Cambodia and Pol Pot killed about half of them.

A: I think we killed more than Pol Pot managed to kill.

Q: But where do you get the figure three million?

A: I’ve used that number many times.

Q: (laughing derisively) Then it must be true because you used it!

A: No, because anything I use in the magazine is checked for its source.

Q: It seems to me that the fatal flaw in your reasoning — for a nation, a family or an individual —

is that if, as you say, our freedoms come from human hands, then human hands can take them back.

A: Yes, they can. And often do.

Q: But, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe our freedoms are given to us by the State. Freedom and liberty do not come from the State! You really believe that?!

A: I really do. I believe freedom and liberty come from our State, from our politics, not from God. That’s the greatness of the American Constitution and the American idea. That’s the greatness of the Enlightenment.

Q: You mean the Constitution that was signed in the year of our Lord?

A: I don’t call it the year of our Lord.

Q: But the Constitution does. It says it was done “in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth.”

A: All right. Fine. But the point is that the glory that was Greece —

Q: Right. The glory that was Greece: Homosexuality, infanticide, suicide.

A: The Catholic Church is far worse.

Q: I’m a Reformed Protestant defending Biblical Christianity.

A: It’s a long record of murder. The Spanish Inquisition —..

Q: We were victims of that.

A: The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

Q: Again, that was us.

A: The butchery that was done in the Name of the Christian God —.

Q: But, I just pointed out to you that the greatest butchery of all times was done in the 20th century by anti-Christians !

A: It was a bloody century.

Q: Did you grow up in a Christian family?

A: Nominally. I never went to church. My parents were Episcopal.

Q: And from the beginning you believed there is no God?

A: Yeah. Though I took it very seriously in college. I was obsessed with the notion of the Christian religion. I read a lot of John Donne’s sermons. I got very much into the 17th century.

Q: A very important century for our freedoms.

A: At Cambridge my tutor was C.S. Lewis.

Q: Really?

A: I entertained — there is a beautiful fairy tale quality about the Christian idea particularly —.

Q: No, no.

A: I think there is.

Q: I know you think this. But, what’s a fairy tale is when people like you invent your own religion.

A: I don’t make up a religion.

Q: Look, all of us are, at our core, religious beings.

A: No, I would say all of us are spiritual beings.

Q: Fine. But when you read the Scripture —.

A: Beautiful language.

Q: But it’s much more than beautiful literature. It’s obviously not a fairy tale made up only by humans. If you want to see a phony, made-up, man-made fairy tale, it’s what those Greeks believed.

When I note that God is withdrawing His hand of protection from the United States, Lapham laughs saying: “It depends on where you were in the United States. If you were on the frontier in the 19th century, you were not protected from these kinds of attacks. The Cherokees could have come across the prarie in a moment. The idea that we are somehow protected by a special Providence is b— s—.”

Me: “Really? So, you think that the Bible-believing Christians who founded our country, and believed in Providence, were just under some sort of mass delusion? I saw a replica of the Mayflower near Plymouth, Massachusetts. Have you seen it?”

A: Yes, I have.

Me: It’s so dinky. I wouldn’t get on it to go across a big lake. Where do you think the folks who got on the Mayflower got the guts and faith to do this, cross an ocean and hack a civilization out of a hostile wilderness? You think that a stupid fairy tale would sustain such people?

A: Yeah.

Me: I don’t think so….

At this point, Lapham mentions the Koran saying it is really crazy like Scientology.

Me: But the Koran is much more dangerous.

A: Christians have been pretty dangerous themselves.

Me: And God is pretty dangerous to those who mock Him and who say He does not exist.

Q: Why wouldn’t you say that in believing what Ashcroft says he believes that he is a Christian? Why would you say instead that he’s closer to the spirit of Osama bin Laden?

A: Because [bin Laden] assigns to the will of allah a sovereign power, a sovereign truth, right?

Q: Well, to the extent that bin Laden does believe in a god (God?) Who is sovereign, he’s not all wrong.

A: I think that’s a very dangerous, Messianic, appalling idea….

Q: If I may say so, I don’t think you realize the danger of what you’re advocating which is Godless government. Do you really want a Godless government where everything is rendered to Caesar? Because this is what you’re advocating. If you don’t believe the State must be restrained by God, then you’re making the State to be God! If there is no God, then what is to limit civil government?

A: Now, you get into a distinction between good government and bad government.

Q: As a Puritan, I would say the distinction is between Godly and unGodly government. Incidentally, our word “good” comes from an old English word meaning “God.” So, a “good” government would be a Godly government.

A: OK. Then I mean government that results in happiness, justice.

Q: Justice?

A: Yeah. I mean, in prosperity.

Q: But what’s to limit the State?!

A: Intelligence.

Q: Oh. But, Hitler was elected, wasn’t he?

A: Oh, sure.

Q: Well, so much for “intelligence” limiting the State.

A: That turned out to be a misfortune in government.

A: I mean, there was a wonderful period in Greece —.

Q: You just can’t stop worshiping those Greeks, huh?

A: No, there are grand periods of government which I would consider good which would be measured by happiness and prosperity.

Q: By all those who were not slaves in Greece, you mean.

A: Yeah, by the non-slaves. And there are long periods of misrule.

Q: But, what is it, according to what you believe, that must limit the State other than “the people,” or some kind of vote or “intelligence”?

A: Well, this is called the Constitution of the United States. It’s called checks-and-balances.

Q: But all of this came from Christianity!

This came about because the absolutism of the Tudors and Stuarts was defeated by the Puritans and all those Christians you despise! They are the ones who fought and defeated the idea of the divine right of kings!

A: I understand. But the idea of kings came from God, right? If you’re going to stay with God’s Law, this gave us the Stuarts.

Q: No! On the contrary, the king got his head chopped off because, among other things, the bastard violated God’s Law and was a murderer. Because the king violated God’s Law he was, correctly, thought to be an illegitimate — unGodly — ruler.

A: Under those rules, I could behead George Bush.

Q: George Bush is not, and has not been charged by anybody, with being a murderer.

A: He will be.

Q: You mentioned the book of Romans earlier. Well, read it closely. St. Paul, in chapter 13, says civil government is established by God and those who hold offices in it are to administer God’s Law.

A: The government it was talking about was Nero.

Q: He was writing about all civil governments for all time — Nero and all civil governments.

A: But he allows for the possibility of democracy.

Q: Hogwash — not if by democracy you mean “the people” determining [what civil government

can and cannot do].

A: Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.

Q: No. The role of civil government in Romans 13 is extremely limited. And it’s limited to administering God’s Law, period! It’s limited to a word you have used, “justice” — a word which in the Old Testament is the same word as “righteousness.” So, the way we know we have a “just” government is if we have a “righteous” government, a government limited by God’s Law.

A: What you want is a theocracy.

Q: Yes! I want Godly rule! Amen!

A: And I think that is just appalling.

Q: Well, we have Godless government now. How do you like it? You don’t, do you?

A: (laughing) No, I don’t.

Q: I don’t either.

A: But we’ve had Godless government for quite a long time in this country.

Q: We have.

A: But, government is never particularly good, is it?

Q: Not when you can’t define “good,” no.

A: I can define good as not a lot of people in jail, not a lot of people getting murdered in the streets.

Q: But, why is murder wrong if there is no God? I can tell you why. Because God says so and people are made in His image. But, you think that’s a big joke.

A: I don’t think it’s a joke. But I don’t think it’s a God (sic). I think there is a possibility of nobility in the human being.

Q: But because your view is relativistic I can say —.

A: No, it is not relativistic. It is secular.

Q: Yes it is relativistic because it is not absolute.

A: No, it is not.

Q: It is not true for everybody all the time. And if I had a gun pointed at your head, and you were telling me why you think someone should not murder another person, all you could say was you were just giving me your opinion. My Christian belief, because itis transcendant, is not relativistic.

A: You can carry that one to Heaven after they have shot you in the head.

Q: My belief came from Heaven!

A: (laughing) Then you can go back there and they’ll patch up that hole in your head. And you’ll be fine and live forever.

Q: Our souls do live forever.

A: Well, that’s wonderful.

Q: But it’s not wonderful for those living forever in Hell eternally separated from God, with wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth in the lake of fire.

A: I’m sure it’s very bad down there.

Q: No, you’re not. You think it’s a big joke.

A: I do.

Q: You do. You’re just like the world before Noah. He was mocked and ridiculed. Crazy old Noah, building that big boat. Ha-ha — until that first drop of rain fell. Then the flood. And suddenly things were not all that hilarious for those in the water.

A: We got a lot of people coming back from Hell with first-hand reports, right? How the hell do you know that? You don’t.

Q: Christ in the Scriptures speaks more about Hell than He does about Heaven. And if He says there’s a Hell, I believe it. Oh, ye of little faith.

A: Christ is a figure of the literary imagination.

Q: You mean He never existed in history?

A: Yeah, but we don’t know who He was?

Q: You mean, you don’t know!

A: That’s true. I don’t know.

TOP NAZI Hans Frank said, correctly, that rejecting Christ led to the rise of Hitler and Nazi atrocitiesI conclude by reading Lapham a statement made by Hans Frank (1900 1946), a Nazi war criminal who was hanged after a trial at Nuremberg. Frank was a jurist, a Member of the Reichstag, and head of the legal department of the Nazi Party. In a final plea at Nuremberg, Frank said, in part:

“At the beginning of this long way of ours we did not think that the turning away from God would have such disastrous deathly consequences and that, as a matter of course, we might one day be involved deeply in this guilt. At that time we could not have known that so much faith and so much will to sacrifice on the part of the German people could have been so badly administered by us.

“Thus, by turning away from God, we have come into shame and we had to perish. It was not because of technical deficiencies and unfortunate circumstances that we have lost this war, nor was it misfortune and treason. God, most of all, has passed sentence on Hitler and carried it out against him and the system which we served, far away from God as we were. Thus may our people be called back from the road on which we and Hitler have led them.

“I beg our people that they may not come to a standstill in this development, that they may not proceed in that direction, not with one single step; because Hitler’s road was the way without God, the way of refusing to believe in Christ, and, in its final point, the way of political foolishness, the way of disaster, and the way of death. His walk, more and more, became the walk of a frightful adventurer without conscience, without honesty, as I know it at then end of this trial.

“We, the former bearers of power, call upon the German people to return from this road which, according to God’s justice had to lead us into disaster and which will lead into disaster every one who would try to walk on it, or continue on it everywhere in this whole world….God’s eternal justice will be the force under which our people will flourish and to which alone I submit.”

Amen! And so it shall be for our country and every nation. As God command us in Psalms 2:12: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

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