How a Pastor and Friend of Woodrow Wilson Responded to FDR's Confiscation of Gold
J. Gresham Machen on Executive Order 6102
J. Gresham Machen was an influential theologian and Presbyterian minister in the first half of the 20th century. He was educated at Princeton Seminary and went on to found Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He was a towering intellect, yet didn’t shrink from controversy or politically incorrect opinions that put him at odds with many of the powerful figures of his day, including at least one US president, family friend Woodrow Wilson.
Machen was interested in politics and economics and spoke scathingly about Executive Order 6102 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared private ownership of gold (which, along with silver, were the only Constitutionally sanctioned forms of money) illegal. Machen saw that the stakes of such a decision were far higher than most realized.
“I think the really significant thing that we find is that America has turned away from God.
In the political and social discussions of the day, God’s law has ceased to be regarded as a factor that deserves be reckoned with at all. That is true in regard to the higher ranges of human life; it is also true in regard to that mammon in which our Lord said a man must be faithful if he is to be faithful in higher things. We hear much about mammon today: We hear much about the currency; we hear much about the question whether what is euphemistically called a “managed currency” is or is not economically more advantageous than the gold standard.
But the sad thing is that in all this discussion we hear little about simple honesty, which is the law of God. I can remember when I had a certain patriotic pride in the good faith of the United States government, in those bygone days when the phrase “sound as a dollar” had not yet become a jest. The United States government, in its business dealings, seemed to me to be the very embodiment of integrity; I regarded it as almost inconceivable that it would repudiate its corporate obligations.
Yet today it has done just that. Of course, there are times when a government or an individual must fail to meet obligations. That is when the government or the individual is bankrupt, when the government or the individual acknowledges the justice of the obligations but is under the necessity of pleading that they cannot be met. I am not saying, therefore, that when a country goes off the gold standard it is necessarily acting dishonestly. But it is not such an honest bankruptcy which we have in the United States at the present time.
On the contrary, what we have is a very ruthless application of the devil's principle that “might makes right.” Look at a United States gold certificate, if you can find one somewhere in a museum today without being put in jail for looking at it. Upon it the United States government promises to pay very specifically not in some other currency but in gold. It is a solemn obligation of the United States. It is a solemn contract–not of any individual, but of the United States government–a contract to the fulfillment of which the honor of the American people is pledged, a contract with the holder of the note. Today not only is that contract not fulfilled, but the holder of the contract is threatened with imprisonment unless he hands over to the defaulting party the contract itself.
I tell you, my friends, there are many things that are uncertain about the future, but of one thing we can be sure: A nation that tramples thus upon the law of God, that tramples upon the basic principles of integrity, is headed for destruction unless it repents in time.”