"Infamy and derision"

Occasional readers of WORLD might be mystified by some of our page headings and story headlines, and even our faithful subscribers-the most theologically literate, historically knowledgeable, and altogether terrific magazine audience on the planet-may wonder. So here is a brief lexicon that leads into a discussion of the Supreme Court's latest seizure of power.

"Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick," the heading on page seven of each issue, is a tribute to the first American newspaper, published under that name in 1690 by Benjamin Harris. Harris, a Puritan, had come to Boston one step ahead of London police who wished to imprison him (for a second time) for criticizing royal officials. He was the forerunner of hard-hitting Christian journalists such as John Peter Zenger and Samuel Adams, who fought with their pens corrupt leaders, and also pinned down the false prophets who condoned evil in high places.

"Remarkable Providences," the heading on this page each issue, is the working definition of news that most American journalists used through 1840; three-fourths of American newspapers and magazines from colonial days to that date were explicitly Christian, and editors saw their goal as recording what God had wrought. "Providences" were anything that happened in the world, good or bad, since all was within God's sovereignty; for example, Massachusetts ministers in 1681 urged careful coverage of "Illustrious Providences, including Divine Judgements, Tempests, Floods, Earth-quakes, Thunders as are unusual, Strange Apparitions, or what ever else shall happen that is Prodigious, Witchcrafts, Diabolical Possessions, Remarkable Judgements upon noted Sinners: eminent Deliverances, and Answers of Prayer."

The headline for this article, "Infamy and derision," quotes from a statement Samuel Adams made in 1776, one month after the Declaration of Independence. Adams wrote, "We have fled from the political Sodom; let us not look back, lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world!" As our cover story suggests, the political Sodom is now all around us, and in this year of our Lord 1996 six justices of the Supreme Court are intent on making the world safe for sodomy.

Those six justices in the Romer case, like seven of their predecessors in Roe v. Wade 23 years ago, allowed their personal views or quests for Washington Post popularity to overwhelm not only the godliness that Christians hope to see in high places, but the basic discipline to which judges should aspire. Following the Romer decision, newspaper editorialists, also like their predecessors 23 years ago, spent one day cheering for the court and then declared the debate over. From now on, liberal journalists suggested, all should fall in line behind the vision of a brave new society that the court has conjured up.

WORLD will not fall in line. Our Christian journalistic predecessors used their limited graphic capacity to mourn the death of American liberty by Britain's Stamp Act aggression; pictured on this page is a typical "tombstone" front page from 1765. Today we have greater technological options, so WORLD artist Rich Bishop has been able to give us a more colorful front-page protest. But the intent is the same: We, like our predecessors, will fight with whatever journalistic tools God gives us.

"Were the talents and virtues which Heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few?" That's what Samuel Adams asked 220 years ago, and most Christians answered with a "No" heard 'round the world. Some Christians then cried peace, peace, when there was no peace, and some do now, but let us not be fooled: Infamy and derision are in the saddle, and we will either ride hard for liberty and virtue or be ridden down the path to destruction.