Where There Is No Vision
President Herbert Clark Hoover was said to choose Proverbs 29:18 when he took his oath of office. That was 1929; a few months later the Great Depression descended upon America and the world. By 1932, as the depth of the depression crippled the country, Roosevelt easily won the presidency under the banner of the “New Deal” and Hoover was relegated to history as being one of the lowest ranked US presidents.
Hoover, believed strongly in the Efficiency Movement, which held that the government and the economy were riddled with inefficiency and waste, and could be improved by experts who could identify the problems and solve them. He also believed in the importance of volunteerism and of the role of individuals in society and the economy. An important writer in our movement, Curtis Clair Ewing, pointed to this date of 1933 as being an ushering in of the move toward socialism and suggested that God could well have granted Hoover a long and useful life to vindicate his position before the world. One TV commentator on the eve of Mr. Hoover’s death stated that if the people had listened to Mr. Hoover and accepted his formula for the future instead of the false charges leveled at him by Mr. Roosevelt, America would be taking a different road today in world leadership. He might well have pointed to the nation’s financial welfare as well because the staggering problems in today’s economy might have been avoided.
In commenting on Proverbs 29:18, Mr. Ewing wrote, “There was nothing wrong with the ability of Hoover, it was the people who lacked the vision to recognize in him the leadership our nation needed. …. From the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the government has taken over more and more of the function of the individual ….. and will land us all in a socialist state. It was not Hoover’s fault, it was the people WHO HAD NO VISION.”
Hoover was a strong Christian. Ewing wrote of him, “He recognized the place the Bible played in the formation of our national ideals and those things which have made us great. From many statements made by Mr. Hoover on the Bible we present the one given when he accepted honorary chairmanship of the National Bible Week October 17-23, 1960. He selected for this occasion the following words, which were sent to the National Federation of Men’s Bible Classes, in convention at Baltimore, on May 12, 1929: ‘There is no other book so various as the Bible, nor one so full of concentrated wisdom. Whether it be of law, business, morals or that vision which leads the imagination in the creation of constructive enterprises for the happiness of mankind, he who seeks for guidance in any of these things may look inside its covers and find illumination’. ‘The study of the Book in your Bible classes is a post-graduate course in the richest library of human experience. As a nation we are indebted to the Book of Books for our national ideals and representative institutions. Their preservation rests in adhering to its principles.’” (Thanks to Curtis Clair Ewing & Wikipedia Encyclopedia)
