Oregon daily emerald., January 21, 1974, Page 9, Image 9

Well, sort of
Nixonite, radical both believe!
By COLMAN MCCARTHY
(C) 1974, The Washington Post
0
WASHINGTON — America has had its share of
odd couples in recent years but none has been odder
than the 1973 match of Chuck Colson and Rennie
Davis. In 1973, each blissed out in new feelings of
religious fervor. Both were hardly into their new
discipleship when they came forward to speak in
new tongues, providing a happy soundtrack for
their amazing performances. Although the torrid
devotion of converts Colson and Davis is to different
lords — Colson to Jesus of Nazareth and Davis to
Guru Maharaj Ji of Houston, Los Angeles, India and
air routes in between — both have in common a
willingness to tell the world of their new
enlightenment.
In forsaking old allegiances — Colson to his
White House political tactics and Davis to mar
ching, rallying and selected tantrums for peace —
these new believers decided to forsake the one
temptation it might be thought they would happily
be rid of: talking to the press. Instead, both have
gone on record about their hot piety, almost
creating a new beat for the working press —
covering the millennium.
OPINION
IT PROMISES to be an easy beat, little legwork
but lots of note-taking. In fact, accurate notes are
not that essential; Colson’s comments on instant
mysticism are interchangeable with Davis’. The
former White House hardtalker told the Washington
Post that he now feels “a great inner serenity, a
great relief in a sense, really a new life that, in a
way changes your whole attitude about why you’re
here and what you’re doing while you’re here. And
it’s a great thrill.”
Davis feels the tingle, too. In the Houston
Astrodome, while waiting to kiss the feet of his
guru, he told a media happening about “feeling this
incredible joy inside your soul. Everywhere you go
you are just beaming. It’s like you had an overdose
of a love potion of some kind and you’re in love all
the time.”
Being taken over by the divinity is expressed in
similar words by the two. Colson: “I think I realize
now that your abilities as an individual are much
more limited than I believed them to be before and,
if you have a relationship with God, that enables you
to call upon Him for the strength that you otherwise
try to summon out of one miserable body...” Davis:
“You should just take this knowledge and realize its
power and then you see that that’s the only aim of
human life. That everything else is given.
Everything is going to be given to us including the
first thing which was our own life.”
FROM THE SAME embankment, both see
mankind playing in the fields of the Lord. Colson: “I
really believe God works through people in ways
each of us do not realize and cannot comprehend.”
Davis says that “there is something that is holding
this together more than just faith.”
The questions raised by the conversions of
Colson and Davis, and by the tender words now
coming from mouths once known for emitting the
harshest of secular talk, have nothing to do with
doubting the pair’s sincerity. Religious faith may be
a big blowout, it may be the only last reality; no one
knows, but everyone in his own sincerity chooses
and is respected for it. Skepticism is too important
to be used up on religion, so long as some godlike
politicians are around giving us reasons to
disbelieve them.
What is unsettling about the pronouncements of
Colson and Davis is the speed in which the public
was given their new enlightenment. It suggests that
the importance of the Colson and Davis conversions
is not that a new faith has taken hold of them but
that their old fervor for espousing an almighty
cause is still their thing.
THIS IS PARTICULARLY striking in Davis’
public behavior. The skilled movement organizer
deftly planning and publicizing anti-war rallies is
now pushing the same buttons for the jowly Indian
kid-god. It’s the new mobe, xeroxed, this time not to
bring down the imperfect Richard Nixon but to
raise up the Perfect Master. In
a 1971 Washington peace rally, Davis wanted to
“organize the country to compel this government to
stop this war.” Similar unlikely visions were ex
pressed by Davis in Houston when his divine
adolescent recently popped up for a mass seance;
Davis would be thrilled “if a UFO would come out of
the sky tonight and land outside the astrodome. And
space saints would walk out and come into the
astrodome and prostrate at Guru Maharaj Ji’s
feet.” Take away the difference between the old and
the new cause of Davis, and his fervent actions —
organizing rallies, reviving the press, speaking in
messianic tones — nave not cnanged at all. Because
of that, it is impossible to take him seriously, except
perhaps to order up some “Free Rennie” buttons.
Davis’ change of ideology is not accompanied by a
timetested change in behavior, the kind such a
doctor a6 Saint Benedict referred to in his sixth
century rule; there he demanded “a conversion of
manners” from those who appeared at the door
gushing in mystical syllables. Over the duration,
the conversions of manners — called lifestyle today
— was the only test Benedict knew for determining
the true seeker from the larkist.
THE UNEASINESS created by Colson’s con
version is not so much in the lack of depth to his
utterances — how similar his prayer-breakfast
theology sounds to that of the White House
preacher-in-chief, Billy Graham — as in the celerity
in which he presented them. In the history of
authentic conversions — meaning the Elmer
Gantry conversions are excluded — the new
members of the faith always either kept silence at
first or did their penance immediately.
America’s most celebrated authentic convert
was Thomas Merton, a Manhattan wordling who
embraced a new faith but then wasn’t heard from
for eight years. When he did speak via an
autobiography — even then, written under
obedience— the public could measure his new faith
against his new behavior. They matched. There was
indeed a conversion of manners, gained after years
of painful struggle and costly austerity. Even then,
nowhere in Merton’s writing does he ever presume
to talk of his own prayer life.
YET WHAT A GIANT like Merton dared not do
in 27 years of intense and costly religion, Colson
does almost immediately, taking us into the privacy
of his spiritual life by announcing about his critics,
“I’ll pray for them.” A style of ugly condescension
is in that statement, as if Colson is dismissing his
critics as fools who haven’t yet seen the light but
might if Colson prays for them.
The full story of the Colson and Davis con
versions won’t be known for some time. The words
of Colson and Davis are stirring and provide fine
copy. But as for documenting their words with
costly actions, that is still to come, presuming that
no new causes come first and capture their strong
fervor.
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