Harry Truman as Baptist president

Baptist History and Heritage, Summer-Fall, 1999 by Glen Harold Stassen

John Lewis Gaddis wrote: "Leaders of great nations often see their own countries as the target of moves by potential adversaries while assuming that their actions could not possibly be interpreted by a rival as hostile. Truman operated in this manner. He consistently stressed the purity of American motives while assuming the worst of the Russians, then puzzled over why Moscow suspected sinister intentions on Washington's part." (26) Here Jesus' teaching on peacemaking could have helped. Love your enemy doesn't mean, agree but get in their shoes, affirm their valid interests, mourn with them when they mourn (Rom. 12:15). Judge not that you be not judged; first remove the log from your own eye (Matt. 7:1-5). It is a teaching of realism that self-righteous religion does not communicate effectively. We can stand some self-examination of our own heritage to ask whether we are effectively communicating this teaching of Jesus. It is crucial for peacemaking. Self-righteous persons--self-righteous countries--do not make effective peacemakers.

I am persuaded that the Soviet Union was pressuring Greece and Turkey as it had pressured Poland, and they were unstable. It could have taken them over if Truman had not decided with great clarity and decisiveness to come to their aid. He did right. But the Soviet Union was also weaker than we thought, and very insecure. What they saw as defensive maintaining of a buffer zone in Eastern Europe, we saw as imperialistic takeover and aggression.

But part of the judgment was that it was self-deception to negotiate with the Soviet Union. This exacerbated the Cold War that followed. This view made it impossible to reach agreements on nuclear arms limitations or on resolving issues that might have been resolved had we talked. Not until the presidency of John F. Kennedy, did negotiations begin to reap benefits on the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty and other agreements.

Suppose Truman had been convinced of the importance of negotiating with your enemy. Suppose his church had taught him Jesus' peacemaking command that when there is hostility between you and your brother, you must drop your gift at the altar and get your self over to see the person and start talking and work on making peace while there is still time. He would still have had his realism about Soviet empire-building, and about the need to be firm and strong. However, the pragmatic effort to work out problems that could be worked out, to limit nuclear weapons where they could be limited, and to reduce the risks of war where they could be reduced, could have found much more support not only in his administration, but in subsequent administrations impacted by the Cold War rhetoric that began with his rhetoric about the Greece and Turkey problem. The U.S. habit of reducing most international problems to anticommunism blinded policy to forces of anticolonialism, nationalism, and economic need. This attitude could have been overcome by a more complex understanding of the diverse forces in the world as they were overcome in part when another Southern Baptist president, Jimmy Carter, caused us to pay attention to the drive for human rights. He put the U.S. more in line with the forces of the worldwide drive for justice and led the countries of Latin America to turn from dictatorship to democracy.