Most students then agree that those things are evil, if by evil we simply mean profoundly immoral….What about Jim Crow, for instance? I encourage them to forget about the United States. Regardless of whether the United States was/is just as evil or less evil or pretty good, was Soviet tyranny evil? I do this exercise partly because many of my students seem to lack the courage to make moral judgments. Making moral judgments invites accusations of hypocrisy or self-righteousness.

Evil has seemed everywhere over the past several weeks. The Boston bombings. Gruesome murders of babies who survived failed abortions. The kidnappings, forced rapes, and forced miscarriages of the women in Cleveland.

Sometimes I’ve found that my students — often steeped in relativism — have to be prodded to consider “evil.” The word has religious connotations. It sounds judgmental (unless applied to the Religious Right, I’ve noticed, because it’s evidently fine to judge judgmental people). It invites self-righteousness, because if some “other” is “evil,” than we are “good.” Most of my students are willing to label the Holocaust evil, but some hold back because, they say, who are they to judge? By whose standards is something evil? I suggest that they use their own standards.

What about Soviet communism, I then ask them? Most of my students are unwilling to condemn communism, because it’s an economic system. I tell them to set economics aside and consider gulags, show trials, returned Soviet POWs, the imposition of dictatorships across Eastern Europe, etc. Most students then agree that those things are evil, if by evil we simply mean profoundly immoral. But it’s very uncomfortable for them to say so, because to label America’s Cold War enemy “evil” suggests that America was/is “good.” What about Jim Crow, for instance? I encourage them to forget about the United States. Regardless of whether the United States was/is just as evil or less evil or pretty good, was Soviet tyranny evil?

I do this exercise partly because many of my students seem to lack the courage to make moral judgments. Making moral judgments invites accusations of hypocrisy or self-righteousness….

There are stark differences between historical / scholarly investigation and ethical inquiry or moral reasoning, and there is perhaps also difference between judging actions and judging movements or even people. Judgment belongs to the Lord, in any event. I have no problem with labeling murder “evil,” including the murders that took place at Jonestown. But our job as historians is to understand. And as Christians, we must recognize the humanity of all of those we encounter, in the present and the past.

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