I have the opportunity to travel a great deal throughout the country and speak to a cross section of Americans—young and old, black and white, rich and poor. This has afforded me some understanding of what the mood of the country is right now. That mood distresses me because I see there is more frustration and despair than there is happiness and hope. There is more anxiety toward, instead of anticipation of, the future. A recent national survey indicated that for the first time the majority of Americans are not optimistic about the future of this country. They believe that the economic situation is going to worsen, that the crime rate will continue to go up, that more and more citizens will become disaffected.

Détente is one of those concepts that perhaps only a theologian is qualified to discuss, because it is a general, abstract concept that can mean anything to anybody. Indeed, the main attraction of the concept lies in this generality and abstractness. Obviously, you cannot come out against detente and in favor of bigger and better tensions. No more than you can come out against peace and in favor of war. Or in favor of hatred and against the brotherhood of man. Thus we are dealing with a concept that in itself is perfectly meaningless. It means nothing to say that there is détente between the United States and the Soviet Union without going down the list of points of tension and asking yourself what has happened with those tensions because of a so-called détente.

Three propositions govern this essay. First, China feels more secure than at any point since 1949. Until the mid-1960's China felt a grave threat from the United States. For a period of several years, highlighted by the Cultural Revolution and crystallized at die Ninth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1969, the Peking leadership felt danger alike from the U.S. and the USSR (and decided to defy bom simultaneously). From 1969 to 1972 the American threat was felt to be much diminished, but the Russian threat was felt to be fairly acute. Now, for the past three years or so China has felt a reduced danger from the North and, of course, a negligible danger from across the Pacific. (Hence its formal military budget shrinks.)

Two countries in East Asia prompt students and visitors to think of them as likely to occupy, in the twenty-first century, a commanding world position. I have in mind, of course, that writers like Norman Macrae of the Economist and Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute look at the Japanese system and project performance that will place Japan in the very forefront of world economies within the next twenty-five years—and this despite the relatively small size of the country and its almost total lack of natural resources. On the other hand, visitors like former Supreme Court Justice Douglas, Kenneth Scott Galbraith of Harvard, and many others have visited China and left it saying, in effect: “I have seen the future, and it works!”

We are heading for the last of the gracious societies. The United States stands on the threshold of collapse. The last bastion of freedom and anticommunism is to be found in the Republic of South Africa. These were the views of a recently transplanted American sitting behind me on the flight to the RSA. After two weeks of visiting various parts of the country—the KwaZulu homeland and the cities and townships of Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Durban, plus a sideline look at the situation from nearby Swaziland—my traveling companion's evaluation of South African society leaves, in my judgment, much to be desired.

I am the only Jew ever invited by the World Council of Churches to an Assembly. With that invitation I attended the latest Assembly, which was held in Nairobi at the end of 1975. For three long weeks I listened, talked to hundreds of delegates, was interviewed on television, lobbied shyly and cautiously for my people, and ate only vegetables and fruit. I found some Christians who had risked their very lives for Jews and open anti-Semites in priestly garb, learned churchmen and ignorant bigots. The Third World was the Assembly's scene and furnished many of its principal actors, but the script could have been as well produced in New Haven or Chicago. There were passionate (and demagogic) speeches aplenty, but the voting was always moderate and the Assembly usually acquiescent. I myself was surrounded by friends and supporters, but I felt very much alone.

The 400 block of Clymer Avenue in Mattapan once boasted a line of gorgeous houses with handsome lawns and sizable garages. Forty years ago those who knew the area would have called the block and a few blocks surrounding it the neighborhood of the hoi polloi. There was, however, a smugness about those who lived in that block, it was said. And because they were Jews, it was also said, they should have known better and treated others who didn't have as much more kindly. After all, if the Jews don't help each other, who will?

In time the neighborhood around Clymer Avenue changed. Most of the rich families moved to Jamaica Plain, Brookline, and Newton. Some families moved as far away as Lexington to the north. All but a few of the grand homes were tom down, and simple, efficient apartment buildings erected in their place.

As Napoleon's armies were advancing into Eastern Europe, a Jew ran gleefully to his rabbi. “Master, the liberators are coming! At long last we shall be free and secure, treated like human beings, given dignity and….” But the sage shook his head. “Yes, we shall be rich and safe. And we shall forget all about God and His Law, break His commandments, run after worthless goals. I'd rather have us poor and oppressed as we are now, but faithful to our Judaism.”

Behind William Hazlitt's eloquence there was certainly vision, and something like courage. For learning does imply, like making, a certain risk—or did. Besides springs and sun, the lurking adder, and there is something ambiguous and awesome about “the shadow of angelic wings.” A certain resolve is thus required if we are to step, in our imaginings, into Einstein's elevator, or test the possibility that we have been living in Plato's cave. It is symptomatic of our times that we feel we must repeat this, even a little insistently and dramatically—that thinking and learning and making, the pursuit of culture, is serious, dangerous business. I am inclined to say that heroism is involved here too, but recognizing that that may sound merely romantic, I settle for the moment on risk.

The living God is active in current struggles to bring a Reign of Justice, Righteousness, Love, and Peace. The Judeo-Christian traditions are pertinent to the dilemmas of our world. All believers are called to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Yet we are concerned about what we discern to be present trends in our churches, in religious thought, and in our society. We see struggles in every arena of human life, but in too many parts of the church and theology we find retreat from these struggles. Still, we are not without hope nor warrants for our hope.