They are dates that “will live in infamy.” September 11, 2001. April 16, 2007. December 7, 1941. President Roosevelt summarized that last date: “America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.” About 3,000 Americans lost their lives on that fateful morning at Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the war.
The surprise attack came early on Sunday morning in the Pacific but it was in the afternoon for the East Coast. Margaret Emery captured the day in her history of Tabernacle Baptist Church of Richmond. She wrote: “As usual, the auditorium at Tabernacle was packed to capacity for the morning worship service. It was the first Sunday, the time for the observance of the Lord's Supper, and the service was somewhat late in disbanding. Many remained for conversation and fellowship before leaving to return to their homes and the Sunday family meal.
“Radios would be turned on for the news of that distant European war. At exactly 2:26 p.m. the ‘flash' that interrupted the National Broadcasting Company program and struck a paralyzing fear into the heart of every listener came! Near-hysterical announcers had brought the awful news of Japan's sneak attack. Within hours, news boys with ‘extras' were on the streets, with meager details of the Japanese attack. All Service personnel were ordered to return immediately to their bases. Train and bus stations were soon crowded to overflowing with Service persons making a desperate effort to report. The world was suddenly turned upside down. In Richmond, and everywhere, lives had been changed in a single moment.”
A religion page writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch observed that “talk of future benefit parties and church socials is fading.” Christmas programs lost their luster. Instead churches were centered on prayer. Women's missionary meetings altered their programs and spent time discussing the world scene and offering “solemn prayer.”
At the Woman's Missionary Society meeting at Second Baptist Church, Richmond, Mrs. C.H. Westbrook and Mrs. J. Hundley Wiley, missionaries to China, gave personal viewpoints on the Far Eastern scene. The meeting closed with special prayers for peace.
At the Foreign Mission Board, there were concerns about their leader, Charles Maddry, who had arrived in Honolulu on Dec. 5 to check on Baptist mission work. George Sadler, secretary for Africa, Europe and the Near East, recommended that the missionaries “return to America if possible or advisable.”
Within a few days of the attack, Henry Alford Porter, the beloved pastor of First Baptist Church, Charlottesville, penned thoughts for the Religious Herald. In part, he wrote: “What on earth is God doing? Why doesn't he do something? It is the question asked most often in time of war, for war seems such a diabolical thing that it shatters men's faith in God.
“No wonder the question is being asked today with an emphasis probably never heard before. All the rights that the common man has fought for during 1,000 years are menaced.
“Why doesn't God intervene and stop all this? Is he going to sit in heaven and do nothing? Has he no loving purpose for the world? I wonder if any reader of the Herald has never felt, like cold steel running into his soul, the sudden stab of that wild doubt. Such inner questioning takes the joy and song out of life.”
Porter answered his rhetorical questions by emphasizing the free choice of mankind. “God is doing something, all that a God can do without utterly taking away human freedom. For one thing he is doing what it is his way to do with the tragedies of humanity—bringing good out of evil.”
Writing 10 days following that day of infamy, Porter actually found some good. He saw the Chinese unifying, the European nations defending themselves against the Nazis, the German resistance movement bravely attempting to exert change. “We have a vindication of the human spirit and an assertion of man against the machine.”
Burton J. Ray of Franklin was president of the General Association and he issued a message. “As Christian men and women who loathe war, we've got to make the sacrifice necessary to stop peoples who are led by madmen who would take away from free peoples the liberties it has taken them a thousand years to acquire. To preserve our liberties, there must be unity. Then, there must be sacrifice.
“What we shall be called upon to sacrifice we cannot tell but whatever the cost, we must pay. Enormously high taxes we expect. Doing without things we are used to having will surely be our lot. Loss of loved ones – ah, who knows? But on top of all of these things, we must sacrifice further, for the needs and opportunities of the church will be increased. We must, somehow, keep up and even increase our home and State mission work.
“In another thing we must not fail and that is love! We must not let this war steal from our hearts a normal love for our fellow man. An old preacher friend once said, ‘You can love your enemy but you do not have to love his wicked ways.' Love is the very foundation stone of that permanent peace that Christ expects his followers to establish in the world and we must not let war rob us of that asset.
“We must not let our faith in God waver. It is very hard sometimes to understand why God does not rush in and put a stop to certain things. But whatever we do not know, we do know God and we know that he is love and we know the right will finally triumph.” Even on abysmally dark days of infamy, God is love and the right will triumph.