What’s the Big Idea?

June 26, 1956
Bridgeport

What’s the Big Idea?

We have been requested to make some observance today of Civic Sunday. Feeling that the Barnum Festival, coming next week-end is a community celebration, the Bridgeport Pastors’ Association suggested that the churches might very well make some fitting recognition of the spirit that prompts such a gigantic spectacle. The Barnum festival is a good idea. It is a good idea whenever separated groups in a community do something together. Something good is happening when beauty, talent, humor, pageant and parade create diversion for the adults and bring excitement and laughter to little children. It’s a good idea too – but it’s not the big idea.

The memorial service we will observe next Sunday, honoring the memory of Phineas T. Barnum is a good idea. He was not perfect. Who is? But he had as many fine qualities as the average person and was a better churchman than many of his day. Just as much as his generosity, his fearless pronouncements of his Universalist beliefs deserve our praise and commemoration. A Barnum Memorial Service is a good thing – but it’s not the big idea.

The nation-wide publicity, the ballyhoo, the trade and interest which accrues Bridgeport businessmen, these preliminaries and consequences of the Barnum festival are good for Bridgeport. The sense of community becomes badly fragmented in city life today. The consequences of urban progress in housing, transportation and specialization of occupation are not entirely beneficial. We love the intimacy of the close-ly knit village, the small but crowded church. We have broken away from the provincialism and isolation of the tribe, clan and family. That break-through was good because it was necessary in the changing world. But in so doing, the person-to-person relationship, the sense of community, threatens to become a part of the forgotten past. So the gathering of clans, the lodges of parading Shriners and Knights, the procession of veterans, baton-twirlers, the floats of business and industry come to recapture and preserve something of the sense of community that was never better illustrated [than] the old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration in the small towns of America. It’s a good idea – but it’s not the big idea.

“... They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks ... nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall ... them afraid ... For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. (Micah 4) That’s the big idea! That’s the daring, optimistic dream of community that men have the power to vibrate within us and tumble the walls of the Jericho of self-centeredness. We must put an end to war, hunger, disease and agonizing poverty because every person on our globe is part of one human family, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh – we must build the universal community, because that’s the Big Idea. That’s the basic oneness of all great religions, not the prize package of Judaism or Christianity.

Here in America the white invaders have been so dominated by their share of mankind’s history, they have never known or overlooked the fact that some of the human beings from whom they took the land had the big idea too. The great Iroquois tribes who made up a Confederation of Indian Nations prior to the time of the European Invasion, dreamed of the Big Idea around their council fires. Their religious savior Deganawida (OUR WILDERNESS SAVIOR, by Thomas R. Henry), born of a virgin mother, or so the Iroquois were taught by their religious teachers, beheld a great vision. This vision was . preached and communicated by Hiawatha, the Indian Savior’s .... Hiawatha was not the character of Longfellow’s poem. The real Hiawatha was a person whose career and personal qualities are startlingly parallel to the life of St. Paul. Deganawida dreamed of a gigantic spruce tree whose top boughs broke through into the light of heaven. (p. 32) The tree grew out of a luminous snow-white carpet spread over rock-strewn hills. This tree was the sisterhood of humanity. Its roots were the tribes. This was the symbolic concept of ‘the universal law of equity, righteous and well being’, of the Great Confederation, in the minds of Deganawida and Hiawatha. The carpet coveted the lands of the nations who had accepted the gospel of Hiawatha and Deganawida. It could be extended to cover the earth. All men of all races could find sanctuary upon it, as when children they had found sanctuary in the arms of their mothers.

The soil from which this tree would grow was composed of three double principles:

“Ne Skenno – health of body and sanctity of mind, peace between individuals and groups.
“Ne Gaiinwiyo – righteousness in conduct, thought and deed; equity and justice in the adjustment of human rights.
“Ne Gashedenza – maintenance of self-defense and military power; maintenance and increase or orenda and spiritual power....”

These religious prophets of the Iroquois had the big idea for they saw the whole human family as being part of the same roots of the great tree of life.

The Big Idea, the universal human community whose roots are irrevocably intertwined, must be more than the unifying symbol of universal religion. If it is only words for religious devotion or only a dream that has no reality, then it is not the big idea. Rather if it is but an echo of occasional wishful thinking; if it is but an empty dream with no fulfillment wanted, and no fulfillment possible, then it is a snare and a delusion and the foulest obscenity of the ages.

But there is substance to the dream. The ideal has begun to become real. This week at the San Francisco Opera House the tenth anniversary ceremonies of the United Nations are the living testimony that the big idea is more than a then the longing of an Israelite the fantastic dream of a native American. FIX. Many Americans have felt aggrieved that the United Nations has not always been a rubber stamp for the United States. Probably many Russians have similar grievances from their point of view. All the prejudices of the tribe have not yet been exorcised from our emotions. We dearly love to hold to and favor what we think of as our own. So sometimes we forget the big idea because we fear Danish silverware, Icelandic fish, English woolens, German Folkswagens, or Japanese gadgets will reduce the abundance of material wealth that is ours. Even more, we fear that delegating part of our sovereignty to a parliament of mankind will produce some terrible sort of disaster.

So in spite of many doubts, some of which obviously are caused by selfishness, and some less clearly provincial, the United Nations is the best spelling out in practice so far of the big idea.

Of course men have died in Korea. There can be no evading of those agonies. Other men have suffered in captivity. A plane has been attacked in the narrow Bering Strait. But threatened wars have been averted many times by UN action or influence – in Israel, Iran, Greece and other spots that might have been the fire to heat up the Cold War. There is no need to repeat to you things that have been said before, which have been shown you this year in movies, slides, pamphlets and newsletters. But when wars are averted, when hungry children are fed, when disease is cured or prevented, when technical assistance begins to lift the burden of burdensome labor and brings the light of knowledge into the faces of those who have been illiterate – one can affirm that the big idea can be achieved.

The dream has become the possibility. This we now know. The Big Idea can become true.

But in our time we cannot rest with the assurance of the possibility. In our time we must face one more fact. The Big Idea must be achieved. How many atomic and hydrogen bombs would it take to reduce all living things to ashes? Winston Churchill, not a scientist, but a man wise enough to understand the implications of what scientists discover, said 50 atomic bombs would do it. Both the United States and the USSR have been manufacturing atomic bombs for years. It has been reported that the United States has thousands of atomic bombs, to say nothing of hydrogen. Perhaps the Russians lag far behind; perhaps not. Even if we decided to take the way of aggression, there is no assurance that the “survival of the country with the most terrible and greatest quantity of atom and hydrogen bombs would have more than a Pyrrhic victory. There is not much comfort in strength because if the Russians fry to dust, so probably will we. A larger quantity of unused inventory of bombs will be slight consolation because no one will be left to be comforted.

The Big Idea must be achieved because there are nervous fingers on the hair triggers of the weapons of mutual extermination.

A scientist speaking before a group of manufacturers and business-men not long [ago] held a one-inch cube of solid uranium metal. He told them that the fissionable power in that one inch cube was equivalent to a “good many hundred thousand pounds of TNT.” Just a single inch cube!

But also, that single one inch cube was equal also to 3 million pounds of coal: equal to the power created by several hundred thousand gallons of gasoline. That potential, for a horrible death or a more abundant life can be held easily in the palm of one’s hand.

Two of three children in the world must go to bed hungry tonight. If all the potential power that is stored so that a nation can make the death strike were used to create power machinery for consumer goods, farm machinery, canneries of food, meat, and fish.... If all the power equivalent to millions of tons of coal were created to turn the wheels of transportation, heating plants, textile mills, drug manufacture, perhaps those children might be fed and clothed with a life before them.

Perhaps you say the cost of this Big Idea is too much. Perhaps you read only the headlines of squabbles and disagreements in the U.N. Perhaps you have not followed our UNESCO newsletters posted on our bulletin board.

The philosopher George Santayana once defended the much criticized Greek philosophy of Epicureanism by remarking that with all its alleged defects in the eyes of Christian philosophers, it had certain values. It taught men that their reliance was on themselves. They were “comrades afloat on the same raft together with no fate not common to them all, and no possible helpers but one another.”

We belong to a religion that teaches that all mankind is one; their roots are one and the future of each is unavoidably bound together with the fortunes of all. The same life-giving fluid runs through all the roots and out to the outermost twig and leaf. Whether we like it or not the people of earth, white, black, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, unbeliever – we are all one. When we recognize and discipline our thoughts, our feelings and our acts in harmony with the feeling of universality, one mankind of many colors, one god with many names, then we are [within] sight of the city of God.

“Earth shall be fair, and all her people one;
Nor till that hour shall God’s whole will be done.
Now, even now, once more from earth to sky,
Peals forth in joy man’s old undaunted cry --
Earth shall be fair, and all her people one.” (Clifford Bax, #342, HS...)

That’s Universalism and that’s the big idea.

The Shaping of a Tradition – Moses

September 16, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage

2. The Shaping of a Tradition – Moses

He was born in peril, lived in danger, knew the loneliness of exile and his death deprived him of fulfilling his dream. But in any assessment of our Judeo-Christian heritage, a most absurd omission would be to overlook Moses; a most short-sighted error would be to dismiss his influence. The mind of Moses, the courage of Moses, the resourcefulness of Moses, the faith of Moses shaped our traditions and changed our ways, even in our generation. The prophet Isaiah said, (51/1)

“Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
And to the quarry from which you were digged.”

This we do, not just to rehearse ancient, epic tales, but because the force which flows through our cultural branches depends on only on current sunshine and rain, but also on the life-force rising from deep-lying roots.

The story of Moses appears in the Old Testament and there is little documentation from other sources. As precise history, the great stories are not consistent facts, recorded methodically as an efficient clerk writes the minutes of a meeting in accurate order. Several different strands of traditions are intermingled as later editors sought to fit contradictory parts of the saga into a unified whole. This effort was quite unsuccessful at times, for many of the accounts are chaotic and confused. As with all great heroes, when accurate biographical detail was lacking, the later poets and bards filled the gaps with the great legendary motifs of mankind. Furthermore, these differing strands of tradition and song were created and altered, not merely to expound historical instances, but more important, to interpret the meaning of history for the people of Israel. But the archaeologists and historians have amply demonstrated that the movement of the Hebrew tribes from Mesopotamia to Canaan to Egypt to the Wilderness and back to Canaan was quite in concord with the movements of the tribes and cultures across the Near East in those days of long-ago.

Except as will be noted, the ceremonies, rituals and general cultural flavor of the Hebrews were rooted in the civilizations of the near east – civilizations which had seasoned for at least two thousand years before the people of the Covenant began their folk-wanderings and astounding religious development.

Approximately three thousand three hundred years ago a child was born in Egypt. His parents were Hebrews numbered among the tribes which had wandered into Egypt from the East in search of food for their families and fodder for their herds. In Egypt, the Hebrews had become slaves, forcibly impounded, to toil as construction workers in the enormous building projects of the Pharaohs.

To Moses’ infancy there became attached one of the great legendary themes of the hero. He was miraculously rescued from peril. According to the legend, Pharaoh’s law decreed that all male Hebrew babies must die. But Moses’ mother made a floating cradle of reeds and set the child afloat in the water amid the bulrushes, with Moses’ elder sister watching afar off. The Princess came to the stream, saw the child, looked with love on him and adopted him. Then with a touch, that was both winsome and humorous, Moses’ mother was paid to take care of her own child. Students of legend will recognize similarities. Sargon, the great Sumerian emperor, who lived more than a thousand years before Moses, was known for a similar experience. Born in Armenia of unknown parentage, his mother, to save him, set him afloat in a reed cradle sealed with pitch. Similarly rescued, Sargon became the most powerful emperor of his time. Romulus and Remus, left exposed on the hillside to die, were miraculously nursed by a she-wolf, grew to become great heroes and founded Rome. The story of the child destined for greatness, who is subject to great peril and saved by amazing circumstances, is one of the great human themes that people have told wonderingly, again and again.

Moses grew up in the luxury and favor of a royal household. Then, we are told, in one of the passages of scripture significant for all time (211), “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out unto his brethren and looked on their burdens.” When a person favored by fortune looks upon the disinherited and becomes conscious of their slavery and oppression, this is a sign that the boy has become the man. This was maturity and it was remarkable in an ancient world in which human slavery was as commonplace as schools are today – a universal institution.

Moses killed an Egyptian overseer who was beating a Hebrew. When the news spread, Moses escaped to the land of Midian. At a well, Moses defended the daughters of a Midianite priest from rough shepherds. An attachment was formed, Moses went to work for the priest, tended his flocks, married Zipporah, a daughter of the priest; they knew the joy of a son and Moses seemed well content. But one day, as Moses was keeping the flocks, he encountered a vision which has become one of the great personal religious experiences – he knows Yahveh, the one God in the burning bush which is not consumed. And Yahveh said to Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people that are in Egypt and have heard their cries.... I know their sorrows and I am come to deliver them.... I will send thee unto Pharaoh that thou mayest bring forth my people.” But Moses is overwhelmed - “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the people out of Egypt?” But Yahveh assures Moses, “Certainly I will be with thee.” The runaway slayer of Pharaoh’s overseer was no longer content in pastoral exile; he accepted the commission of the vision; returned to Egypt and the great struggle with Pharaoh began its astounding rhythms.

The stories have more than a light touch of miracle and they have been impressed with the mark of ancient cultic practices. But the stories of the Plagues and the contests with Pharaoh’s magicians paint vivid colors around the drama of the Exodus. The ancient sacrificial ritual became established as Passover, to mark the exemption of Hebrew infants from the hand of death which fell on all Egyptian children. That tradition has been a deep print on our culture, for when Jesus celebrated his last meal, he too was observing the Passover. Our communion feasts and rites in all times and forms bear traces of this celebrated legend.

Moses led the Hebrews to safety and the journey was marked by triumph in the passing of the Red Sea where the host of Pharaoh was drowned. The rhythmic, exulting war song of Miriam is probably much more ancient than other accounts in Exodus. Poetic sagas are lasting (15-1 ff.):

“I will sing unto Yahveh for he hath triumphed gloriously:
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea....”

The years of wilderness wandering were crucial. The people were not easy to lead; they were rebellious; they yearned after the flesh-pots of Egypt; they criticized Moses; they yielded easily to cultic practices which were abhorrent to the Yahveh as Moses knew him. Imperishable religious symbols began to take form, the Ark, the Tabernacle and the Law emerged in the wilderness. The Book of Deuteronomy, written centuries after these times tells us how a weary, aged man ascended Mount Nebo, there to gaze on the promised land he may not enter, knows that he “shall not go over thither.” So Moses the servant of Yahveh died in the land of Moab ... and they “buried him in the land of Moab” and no man knows of his grave in the later centuries.

The cultural seeds and developing ethics of the old books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy have been strong guides in the shaping of our way of looking at the world and behaving in the world. A discussion of all the ideas and events which have marked us is the study of a lifetime. In holding forth the values of the Mosaic heritage, let me suggest only these ideas: l) That Moses was the first in the line of prophets, which were unknown then to other cultures and have consistently represented religion in its highest forms. 2) That Moses’ experiences indicate that greatness of purpose and comprehensive courage are usually found in an individual who has experienced inner conflict and known his own soul in decision-making loneliness. 3) That the monotheism that Moses proclaimed was of immeasurable importance in the molding of the future; and 4) that when Moses looked with compassion on his enslaved brethren and with indignation on their masters, he was etching on the page of history a recognition of the common man, that to this very hour is our guide, our discipline and our goal.

Moses was first in a line of prophets, unique to the historical world as we know it. Feeling that he spoke God's word for the betterment of man, he fearlessly attacked tyranny and courageously reproved his own people for their wrongs. Of this great prophetic tradition we shall say more, two weeks hence, but six hundred years before the Gautama left his royal home to establish the great religion known as Buddhism, Moses was confronting the Pharaoh, most powerful and magnificent king of that day. Six hundred years before Zoroaster was establishing the religion which bears his name, Moses was leading the long march from slavery to the difficult, but free, Wilderness. Six hundred or more years before Confucius was teaching ways of living that were wise, gentle and mutually helpful, Moses, under the pressure of great crises, was lawmaker whose judgments were humbly made because he was ever-conscious that he was the servant of Yahveh. The prophetic line continued through Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus, and the world of Islam would testify that this same prophetic line continues through to Mohammed, also. The strength of that tradition can be most clearly known when we realize that every one of those prophets spoke only in the name of Yahveh, the one eternal God, spoke for no other gods, spoke for no other ideologies.

Heroes characteristically acquire strength in solitude and the wilderness. Toynbee uses this theme as one of the rhythms always found in the cycle of history. After Moses killed the Egyptian overseer, he fled to the land of Midian. As he tended the sheep of his father-in-law, the religious experience he encountered by the burning bush tempered his soul for new endeavors. Many centuries later, the founder of Islam, Mohammed, observed, "He will never be a prophet who was not first a herdsman." The great strength of epic heroes is not spontaneously generated; it comes from a long period of brooding, intellectual clarification, and commitment from the depths of one's being.

Moses came down from the hills and went back to Egypt a stronger man than the Moses who had fled from the consequences of his retaliation against the overseer. Those who think on the task Moses assumed, to lead the Hebrew out of Egypt, can surmise that Moses had some awareness of what the consequences would be: the danger to be met in Egypt, and the strategy and courage needed to carry through the exodus; the criticism and recriminations of the liberated people, who would become weary of the Wilderness hardships and think wishfully even of the slave days of Egypt. Has it ever been different, whether in that for time and place, or right now in the trials that beset us individually? The discipline of solitude, the honest confronting of what we value most – to see the-burning bush in our hearts – out of such individual testings of self-honesty and forthright decision are wrought the strong souls who can match hard times. Moses did not know that his face shone when he came down from the mountain. His face shone because he had encountered something bigger than himself. There is no better illustration than this marvelous old legend to make clear a mysterious but wonderful paradox of human nature. The supreme worth of the individual is best realized when the individual loses himself in a great cause and is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of others.

Moses established monotheism among the Hebrews. Never overlook the impact of this on our lives through what we call the Judeo-Christian tradition. There are complicated analyses of what were the roots of Moses’ belief in the one God, Yahveh. Some scholars maintain that he adopted the religion of his father-in-law, the Midianite priest, Jethro. Others see behind Yahveh the shadow of a mountain god of thunder, lightning and moving avalanche. A case can be made for the influence on Moses of the remarkable Pharaoh, Ikenaton, the child of the Sun, who proclaimed the Sun, Aton, as the supreme God of the universe. Still others testify simply that in the vision of the burning bush Moses had the personal experience of Yahveh, that there were no particular antecedents; and from that experience, with face shining, Moses established the enduring Hebrew belief that there is one, and only one, Eternal God, Yahveh.

Quite aside from these scholarly considerations, one things stands forth clearly in the thirty-two succeeding centuries: history has been shaped because the Hebrews believed that there was one God who maintained moral relations with man, passed judgment on man while loving man as his unique and personal creation. Without this profound conviction, history just could not emerge as it did. There could have been no Jesus who considered the Creator his loving father; there could have been no Mohammed who stood for the sovereignty of one God over all history and all men.

One need not accept this interpretation of the nature of God in order to acknowledge its profound influence. Quite aside from any considerations we might discuss of the nature of belief, and the ways ideas of God are acquired – whether God creates men or men make gods, the moral idea of God, proclaimed 600 years before Socrates, 1200 years before Jesus, was a creation of faith that exalted man and influenced not only Hebrew religion but all aspects of Western civilizations.

The startling nature of this difference can be noted if one compares the other ancient gods to Yahveh. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer certainly were composed long after Moses. Those are great and stirring epic tales. Yet, consider the differences in the ways of the gods. Compare them and their self-indulgence, frivolity and willfulness with the majesty, sovereignty and morality of the God of Moses’ experience.

The Hebrews were not always faithful to this concept. They went after strange gods; they backslid; their religion became marked again and again with the stains of Canaanite and other religions they encountered in their wanderings. But always the prophets called them back to Yahveh, continuously reminding them that they were a people bound by a conscious covenant with a sovereign God who was over all, through all and in all.

Another indication of the power of this monotheism is the realization that the tensions between the Hebrews and the other tribes of that world begin when the Hebrews stood by their covenant to serve and acknowledge no gods but Yahveh. This gave them unity and continuity which no other people, so persecuted, or scattered again and again, could match.

Lastly, and most vital, in those days there was begun a tradition which impinges on us still wherever men and women are denied the rights of equality, freedom and the dignity which all souls may claim. When Moses struck down the overseer, fled, encountered his God and came back to lead the Children of Israel to freedom, he was staking humanity's claim for human rights. The weak shall be protected from the strong; the slave shall be freed; the oppressed shall be liberated; the equality of all men before Yahveh is undeniable.

It comes home to us right here in Rochester. It comes home in Albany, Georgia, in Hungary, in Spain – wherever men arc denied their rights, the ancient tradition of the Exodus returns as a support for those who struggle for freedom, as a reproof for those who would hold back human beings from their rights. Not only rights in the abstract, but the right to live where one's money and credit permit; the right to equal education; the right to work on the basis of ability, training, experience, not on the basis of religion, color or national origin; equal rights to the free man's ballot; equality in public facilities. This principle of freedom's holy light can still be our pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. It is not strange that some of the great Negro spirituals which have strengthened the emotional power to resist oppression and establish freedom, have as their theme, the struggle of Moses, the Exodus and the Wilderness wanderings: "Go down Moses," "The Old Ark's A-Moving," "Moses crossing the Red Sea."

The late James Weldon Johnson, the poet who so skillfully captured the spirit of the great sermonic art form of the itinerant Negro preacher, used the Exodus as the theme of "Let My People Go."

"When Pharaoh saw them crossing dry,
He dashed on in behind them--
Old Pharaoh got about half way across,
and the waves rushed back together,
And Pharaoh and all his army got lost,
And all his host drowned.
And Moses sang and Miriam danced,
And the people shouted for joy,
And God led the Hebrew children on
Till they reached the promised land.
Listen! Listen!
All you sons of Pharaoh.
Who do you think can hold God's people
When the Lord God Himself has said
Let my people go."

From these deep roots flow the values we cherish today. There is no question about our lip service to these moral demands; but just as Moses experienced God and then traveled the hard road from that moment on, so our traditions, great as they are, require of us that we shall apply them in our lives as well as acknowledge their truth in our minds.

The Nature and Influence of Religion

September 9, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage

1. The Nature and Influence of Religion

None of the great living realities of religion can be known in their fullness when experienced only second-hand. In the weeks to come, the values and treasures of our Judeo-Christian heritage will be considered seriously. However, nothing is more sure than that we will exist in spiritual poverty if we try to live solely on the religious capital inherited by our forefathers. To possess religion, we too must meet it in personal experience, and follow in our lives the directions it charts for our efforts. In his poem, “The Buried Life”, Matthew Arnold wrote,

“But often in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us – to know
whence our lives come and where they go.”

Not only is it natural to know a “longing to inquire into the mystery ... so wild, so deep within us,” but also the signs of the times demand that unless we turn to high values we shall perish in conflict or flounder in triviality.

Man has probably been on earth in (or close to) essentially his presently evolved form for considerably more than a million years. But using the million-year figure as the measurement of man’s place on the time-span, together with 4000 BC as an estimated time when the dawn of civilizations represented hunting man becoming farmer or city dweller, “then all the human major technological advances may be said to have occurred in less than 1% of all our time on earth.” (See DeRopp, SCIENCE AND SALVATION). But long before civilizations, man had the intense desire to stay alive, eat and propagate. So he became a killer of animals and human enemies. His philosophy had to be the opposite of Coleridge’s later couplet,

“He liveth best who basheth best
Both man and bird and beast”

In our time, sometimes it seems that the 99% emphasis in the history of human learning to bash best, submerges our evolved ethical truth, that “he liveth best who loveth best.”

Suffice it to say that we should now know there is no discharge in war; everybody will be bashed, convincingly.

The threat of total war is by no means the only menace confronting us. Our values seem tarnished and confused. In John Steinbeck’s WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT, Ethan, who deserts the cherished integrity of his cultural inheritance for money and power, discovers that when he reaches his material goals, life is no longer worth living. Security is too many times associated with dollars and stocks, which, no matter how formidable their reckoning, are precious little help when one needs a reason for being, when one searches for living purpose which can be justified in the moments of self-searching loneliness.

Furthermore, a religion of easy slogans and antiquated generalities just will not do for difficult problems and specific, formidable situations. Huston Smith, in his book, THE RELIGIONS OF MAN, (p. 311), reminds us of the 1928 debate about the REVISED PRAYER BOOK in the English House of Commons: an English M.P. came out after the debate, muttering that “he didn’t know what the fuss was all about. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘we all believe in some sort of something.’” Belief in ‘some sort of something’ is not very nutritious religiously, and in spite of the M.P., [man] needs a vigorous infusion of moral vitamins.

Without feelings of either arrogance or inferiority, we can be sure that anxieties, confusions and “foggy bottom” indecisiveness can be turned to positive aspects of living if we are willing to face up to the nature of religion and maintain faith in its influence. I say this as one who views supernaturalism as an outmoded concept and the expectation of receiving special attention in the form of cosmic favors as a singularly inept way of understanding the nature of God. For, although the supernatural antiquities and old comfortable certainties have faded, we can aspire still with Tennyson (From Ulysses),

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, --
One equal part of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”

The definitions of religion are as numerous as cars on the expressway. Just as cars and roads are means of transportation, so definitions of religion are tools to carve meaning. Religion is “the serious and social attitude one takes toward those forces which he believes determines his destiny.” (J.B. Pratt). But definitions of religion without explanation and application are reminiscent of the conversation between Alice and the Queen in THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS:

Red Queen: “When you say hill, I could show you hills in comparison with which you’d call a hill a valley.”

“No, I shouldn’t,” said Alice, “A hill can’t be a valley, you know, that would be nonsense.”

Queen: “You may call it nonsense if you like, but I have heard nonsense compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary.”

I’m sure your experience, like mine, records times when discussion of religion becomes overcast with dense clouds of confusion.

Thus, when religion is defined as a “serious and social attitude toward those forces which determine one’s destiny,” there is a three-fold implication: A sense of origins – what is man; a purpose for living – why must I do what I must do; a feeling for destiny – what is the goal of our human striving. Dr. James L. Halliday, a British physician and scholar of human affairs, proposed that when there was decay or loss of a sense of origins, purpose for living and feeling for destiny, this was sure evidence of the loss of self-respect in a culture.

It follows too when we trace out the implications of religion so defined, that there can never be an end to inquiry, because all the achievements of religion, science, the wisdom of all the humanities and the experience of political and social institutions continuously contribute deeper insight and widened knowledge. Religious truth, then, is neither spaded up from secret excavations nor translated from ancient and mysterious ciphers, but re-defined and refined in the never-ending process of human experience. The nature of religion is truth; the influence of religion is measured by the quality of its commitment to living purposes.

Consequently religion is both individual and social.

Religion is individual – what “man is in his solitariness.” Religion is personal. Think how convinced Jesus must have been that religion was personal when he advised his disciples to shut themselves off in a closet when they prayed. He moved away from the others in the terrible personal struggle of Gethsemane. Moses was alone on Sinai and Paul by himself on the road to Damascus. It is just foolish to try [to] escape personal religion by attempts to whirl endlessly in social and business activities. Sooner or later, one must meet himself.

In the Times Union, August 8, a dispatch from Miami, referring to previously established cases of husbands and wives being allergic to each other, Dr. Samuel Feinberg reported to a medical seminar that a person may have auto-sensitivity – allergic to himself. No cure was prescribed. Now this is suggestive. If a person does not develop personal religion, then spiritually, he is allergic to himself. The Hindu Scripture, the Baghavad Gita, possessed this wisdom centuries ago in the verse,

“To him who has conquered himself by himself,
His self is a friend.
But to him who has not conquered himself by himself,
His self is hostile like a foe.”

(Quoted by Campbell, ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY, p. 339)

Religion is social, too, and collective. Otherwise any notion of religion’s influence would be without meaning. Personal religion is an inner experience. Social religion is an outward expression in group fellowship, worship, work, service. Social religion is not an after-thought. It is no less basic than meditation in aloneness. This truth has never been said more succinctly than it was by the prophet Amos in the 8th century B.C.,

“But let justice roll down as waters,
And righteousness as an overflowing stream.
Hate the evil and love the good,
And establish justice in the gate:
Then shall the Lord of Hosts
Be gracious unto you and hear you.”

Justice, righteousness, evil, good – these values have meaning only in the social life of persons.

Thus the influence of religion is inseparable from both the individual in his aloneness and the individual in society.

The inquiring mind not only cherishes ideas in solitary, but communicates ideas in society – the editorial, the argument, the commentary, the discussion, the sermon, the debate, the poem, the novel, the essay and perhaps above all, that wonderful possession of the human family, the conversation between persons who agree on each other’s worth and dignity and are willing to disagree on almost anything else.

One of the talented writers of our time, who died too soon, was James Agee, novelist and journalist. In a collection of letters posthumously published, James Agee wrote sensitively about this miracle of human communication, “I care mainly about two things: 1) getting as near truth and whole truth as humanly possible, which means several sorts of ‘truth,’ maybe, but on the whole, man’s spiritual life, integrity, and growth, 2) setting this (near) truth out in the cleanest and clearest possible terms.”

But the inquiring mind and the communicating mind are not enough, for a large part of the influence of religion swings on the emotions. We express our emotions in song and service in affirmation and denial. The mind which praises good and condemns evil would be deprived of power without the strength of righteous indignation of the hope which expressed gladness gives. “While I was musing, the fire burned,” the psalmist said. How true that is. How can one face up to one’s errors without authentic penitence – and penitence is an emotion as well as an intellectual exercise. How can one really forgive another’s wrongs without the cleansing power of emotion, for forgiveness is feeling as well as verbal adjustment.

Then too, beyond the inquiring mind and felt emotion, the influence of religion is an incomplete experience without the energy for action. For action brings together creatively the forces of mind and heart to fulfill the purpose of living. It is religion in action that represents the true application of one’s professions.

Not long ago there was a reference in the SRL (8/11/62) to the poet Robert Graves and the power of poetry. Robert Graves said a poem saved his life. “[I] had been wounded in the lung in World War I and was vulnerable to the killing influenza afterward – desperately ill, but one thing kept me alive; the obstinate intention of getting my poem right. By the thirty-fifth draft I had all but solved this and was tottering about on a stick. The ‘troll’s nosegay’ saved my life.”

This is the saving power of religion, too – the obstinate intention to get things right.

The nature of religion is the search for truth and the celebration of life. The influence of religion is in ideas, for “ideas have consequences.” The influence of religion is in emotions, for feelings convey real attitudes with bluntness that conciliatory words can seldom conceal. The influence of religion is discovered in the effort to get things right because action or inertia measure the degree of love for truth and the depth of feeling.

A Canadian preacher referred to a Gaelic poem which described a mother playing on the harp while her fascinated children gathered around. Suddenly she stopped. The children picked at the harp-strings, trying unsuccessfully to reproduce the melodies and harmonies.

“Mother, why doesn’t the harp answer us as it did you?”
“Children, the music is in the strings – but the power to draw it out is yours to seek and develop.”

The nature and influence of religion is like unto that. Religion is in the great dialogue of ideas. Some will emerge as the dominating ideas for generations, perhaps centuries. Those who reflect and apply skill, training and candid expression will create the new themes. Religion is the universal intermingling of peoples and cultures, hungry peoples and over-fed peoples, under-developed cultures and highly industrial cultures. Those who apply humanity and thoughtfulness, care and foresight will bring out human notes of growing harmony. Religion is the rhyme of the seasons, the vastness of the cosmos, the changing light. Fear and superstition produce the wrong song for our age. But research, appreciation for cosmic order, reverence for beauty, wonder for creation and commitment to ethical values can compose a song of the world that may be as awe-inspiring for us in our age as ever was the burning bush to Moses, the dream of angels to Jacob or Isaiah’s overwhelming experience of the majesty of God.

The Spreading Light

December 19, 1965
Plainfield

also: Lakeland 1978, Port Charlotte 1978

The Spreading Light

As the human family moves in slow procession from superstition to science, from magic to understanding, and from the miraculous to the natural, the Christmas-Hanukkah message suggests differing levels of perception. Even as the spreading light of knowledge has given us wider vision of privilege and responsibility, so also may deepening comprehension of the poignant joy of the winter festival season increases our awareness of the ties that bind persons to each other and to the magnificent universe in which we live and of which we are a part.

Early, pre-literate people celebrated when they were released from fear of total darkness. The lessening light of Autumn and early Winter stirred the pangs of fear. When the sun lengthened its daily visit at the Winter solstice, men and women feasted, sang and danced. The world was not dying! Clothed in enduring green, the fir and spruce had resisted the colorful death of other foliage, thus the fragrant evergreens became living symbols of hope.

The strange gods of frost and fire were not entirely unpredictable and whimsical, but seemed to be dependable. Even the early folk began to sense that the world-process was orderly. The celebrations became regular as season after season repeated the sustaining rhythms of bud, blossom, fruit, harvest, sleep – and then bud again. Even as the late December days diffused longer periods of daytime, so the light of confidence in nature began to illuminate the darker fears of humankind. The stirrings of faith began to overgrow the tremblings of fear, even as the mistletoe festooned the oak tree.

After many centuries it came to pass that the Judeo-Christian era in our culture marked the spread of more light. In Jewish homes there is now being observed the “festival of lights” - Hanukkah. In this part of our tradition the spreading light celebrates religious freedom. When Judah Maccabeus and his brothers led a revolution against their Syrian and Roman overlords, they recaptured Jerusalem only to find that there was only enough oil to feed the lamp for a day. When the Temple was purified, the legend goes, enough oil was miraculously provided for eight days. And so the worship continued as a ceremony of light, but more vitally, it was a celebration of freedom.

Although the early Christians were children of their times and were prone to believe in magic and witchcraft, nevertheless, particularly in the writings of Paul, there is an increasing affirmation of the reliability of the God in whom they believed. This was an emphasis that light was needed in a different shadowed area of the self.

The spreading light of faith in an orderly Universe stimulated a growth of confidence that the power that underlies our Universe (name it God or what you will) is somehow tied in with the best of human experience. There is a basic liberating belief implicit in the facade of fantastic fervor which still pounds and chatters at us from authoritarian churches, pleading Pentecostals and irrepressible evangelicals. It is this: the human family is worth redeeming; the condition of men and women is not hopeless! Unitarians and Universalists resonate to that foundation of faith.

The religious primitives celebrated the Winter solstice because the gods once more saved them from darkness and death.

Then Judas Maccabeus and his followers transformed that tradition of light to an annual celebration of the anniversary of religious freedom. Then the Christian extended human hopes to much of the Greek, Roman, and North African world with the Gospel which affirmed that the Supreme Being was neither whimsical nor a-moral – God was a Power having moral relations with humanity. Even more daring, the early Christians proclaimed that God incarnated himself as a little baby to redeem mankind – and many in the ancient world responded to that dramatic and winsome theology. Little wonder that our roots in early Christian doctrine and culture lead us to respond warmly to the poetry, carols and beautiful legends and myths of Christmas. We respond even when we give neither obedience nor literal belief to the doctrines illustrated by art, music, and scripture.

Is the Christian faith the limit to which the light can spread. Many would so avow. But some of us believe that the light must spread wider and deeper still.

The early peoples joyously responded to the favors of gods who preserved or destroyed at their fancy.

The Maccabeeans demonstrated that the light of the world is cast by the lamp of freedom.

The Christian Gospel sings grateful praises to God for his redeeming power in the incarnation.

But there is a more splendid, a more daring and more audacious dream! Not only are all persons worth redeeming, but also men and women are the agents of redemption. Our faith [surmise] proclaims that it is within human power to extend the light of love and justice into the shadowed parts of our individual selves and that the same light can make social realities of the astounding ideal, “peace on earth, good will to men.” Aristotle wrote (NICOMACHEAN ETHICS), “It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of our subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.” John Dewey may have intended much the same point when he wrote, “ideas are effective not as bare ideas, but as they have imaginative content and emotional appeal.”

From Ferguson, SIGNS AND SYMBOLS IN CHRISTIAN ART: “Language of sign and symbol is the outward and visible form through which is revealed the inward and visible reality that moves and directs the soul....”

The matchless beauty of the story of the holy family is a part of the spreading light. But all families are holy. Furthermore, all wanted babies are precious gifts of life, who as they grow in wisdom and stature may become redeemers. The culture-bearing carols, stories and myths embody these traits with artistic and emotional expression, giving power and lift to our lives at this season of high holiday.

Talking effectively about the deeper meanings of Christmas is nearly impossible. Brahms once said that with all his talent he could not achieve the beauty of a German folk-dance melody which every child was able to sing.

From [primitive superstition], to freedom’s light, to gospel, to one human family. This I believe is the spreading light, to goal of the light-hearted. All the glory of song and story are hints of deep humanitarian meaning. Wise men and shepherds, innkeepers, a careworn father, a weary woman, great with child – all these meet in matchless story to remind us of the superiority of a society in which all persons are equal. The festive celebrations impinge upon us, and we should be stirred by that awareness [that, if we all ate at one table, no one would be allowed to grow hungry.]

The experiences of Christmas and Hanukkah carry the impact that life is sacred; that the humblest and the proudest have equal need to belong to each other; that carol, candle and crèche open us a window through which we can see what life should be. “Peace on earth, good-will to men [and women].” But can the poetry of peace be transformed to the reality of peace? That’s the bind. Did you see the item in Friday’s paper that reported that a large firm placed a Christmas window display, “peace on earth” at Madison and 57th Street? The display featured quotations on peace from Dag Hammarskjold, Adlai Stevenson, Pope Paul VI.

The designer who received the brunt of the complaints explained, “some people interpreted the presentation as some sort of demonstration about Vietnam. So the window display was revised to eliminate such quotations as “war is the negation of peace and humanity,” and Pope Paul’s call, “War never again” was “amplified and identified.”

Is this our time? We respond to ancient wonder stories about angels singing about peace 2000 years ago, but when the meaning of peace is grappled with today, people either back away or seek to quiet things down by lambasting those who speak peace.

Can we go beyond ancient words and lilting carols? There is an old legend from Eastern Europe which may fit the reality. “A pious Russian went to a holy man and asked him to find out from God if there was going to be a war. The holy man said he would try. When he had prayed, he said that God had given him the answer: ’There will be no war, but the struggle for peace will be so furious that not one stone will be left standing on another.’” (CHRISTIAN CENTURY)

Is this not our tragic dilemma in Vietnam?

There are many, like I, who will continue to urge unrelenting efforts for peaceful negotiation and who still believe that a halt in the bombing, a cessation of escalation may provide the impetus for such confrontation across the table rather than confrontation in rice fields and villages with innocent men, women and children caught in the deadly crossfire, fire and explosion.

Albert Schweitzer (PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION) wrote, “I would be a humble pioneer of the (new) Renaissance and throw the belief in a new humanity like a torch, into our dark age.”

May our deepest Christmas concern be that light will spread, like a torch hurled into darkness, so that “peace on earth, good will to all people,” will not be only matchless poetry, but some day, political and social reality.

The “Death of God” Theology

December 5, 1965
Plainfield

The “Death of God” Theology

My guess is that many persons have heard of the “Death of God” theology who ordinarily are not aware of the massive whirlings of words stirred by the windmills of theological debate. When theology not only receives the brief and teasing treatment of TIME magazine, but also is the subject of an extended three-part feature in THE NEW YORKER, one can surmise that something is happening which has wider appeal than most subjects discussed in “Angel Factories.” (Angel Factory – that was the totally inaccurate label attached to my theological school by students in the liberal arts college on the same campus.) Not only has the “death of God” warranted space in popular and sophisticated journals, but also there have been cries of alarm and the usual targets to the non-conformist. The “death of God” theology is my subject today; and the choice is beset with certain hazards: 1) the subject is not easily understood, and therefore I may not appraise it with sufficient lucidity. 2) it is more accurate to refer to “Death of God” theologies, because there is more than one variety, and 3) I may be quite wrong in guessing that radical revision is going to be a continuing feature of Christian theological thought. But I am taking such risks because one of the historic postures of both Unitarianism and Universalism has been that of being on the leading edge of theological revision; and if it is possible that we are being pre-empted on theological frontiers, then we should be aware of such displacement.

In less than thirty minutes, I can only sketch in broad strokes the following outline:

Why should this movement happen now?
How is it related to other modern philosophical and literary expressions?
Who are the advocates of the “Death of God” theology and how do they differ?
Is what they are saying significant?
Is there identity with the theologies represented among us? (theism, naturalism, humanism, etc.)
And lastly, is the authentic question being asked when one inquires, “Is God dead?”

1) Why should this movement gain momentum and gather interest at this particular time? There is nothing new about Bible criticism – for 100 years or more, the studies have accumulated, demonstrating that scripture is a complex weaving of many strands of time and place, cult and culture, literature and apologetic. Similarly there is nothing startling in the notion that different peoples have had differing ideas of God or no-god. This relativity has been observed since the time of the ancient Greeks. but WWII created considerable despair about man’s ability to save himself from self-destruction and subsequent events have not done much to restore self-confidence. Observers were disillusioned with professed values of human dignity and individual worth, which in practice were demonstrated to be values which did not apply to one’s enemies or even to unfortunate minorities within one’s own boundaries. As one writer (Fackenheim, COMMENTARY) put it, “the ancient belief that God is with us, loves and cares for us cannot be sustained in the light of undeserved catastrophe and tragedy.” The question of how God could be both good and all-powerful was inexplicable. Certain theologians tried to wrestle with these difficult questions. The name heard most often is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was confined in a concentration camp by the Nazis who eventually strangled him. Although Bonhoeffer wrote relatively little, his writings have had considerable impact, particularly his LETTERS FROM PRISON. Bonhoeffer called for a “religionless Christianity;” and this paradoxical phrase has been repeated again and again.

Paul Tillich, the refugee from the Nazis who taught in the U.S. for many years and who died quite recently, may prove to be the most influential writer on religious themes in our century. His writings, particularly his three-volume SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, are ponderously phrased and difficult to understand, but of weighty importance in theological thought.

A couple years ago, John Robinson, the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, England, drew worldwide attention with his little book, HONEST TO GOD, which presented in popular form some aspects of the difficulty involved in traditional ways of belief. In particular his skepticism about all historic ways of believing in God created as much consternation as any religious book within memory.

The “Death of God” theology is an intellectually serious grappling with the ideas that Bishop Robinson presented in oversimplified and under-developed forms in HONEST TO GOD.

As the “Death of God” theology is linked with our times, something should be said to relate it to current modes of thought in parallel studies.

We have seen the development of essential philosophy where those who hold to it see man as existing before he can be explained. “Existence precedes essence,” wrote Sartre. The existentialist confronts a universe where man can assume no eternal meanings, but rather man must carve for himself meanings out of the experience of existence and assume no more than that. Man cannot assume that the universe is rational, or even that man himself reasons in the light of the emotional sub-currents which produce rationalizations as well as rational thought. Simone Weil expressed some of the rather paradoxical nature of this attitude when she expressed the thought that the absence of God is the mode of the divine presence, “we have to belief in a God who is similar to the true God in everything but that he doesn’t exist.” (quoted by Alexander Czegledy, p. 1352, CHRISTIAN CENTURY) Existentialism sees only a void where more idealistic times saw meaning in the nature of the Universe. The existentialist holds that only “by facing the void that we may arrive at something positive, at authentic existence, at freedom, at responsibility, at the courage to make sense of the non-sense of being.” (Czegledy)

The second mode of thinking which relates directly to the “Death of God” theology is that linguistic philosophy generally known as relativism. Let me remind you that Positivism holds that knowledge is verified by experience and that if it cannot be verified by experience, it is not meaningful knowledge. Furthermore, that as testing has been found to be the way to validate physical science, humans have discovered a method that is a model of certainty and exactness (see Herbert Marcuse, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, p. 1-2).

Against these backgrounds of the disillusioning 20th century wars and troubles, together with the theologies of several Europeans, combined with considerable influence from existentialism and positivism, the names of three young American theologians are beginning to become well-known, or notorious, depending on the attitude one takes while reading their material: Van Buren, Altizer, Hamilton.

In this country they are identified with the “Death of God” theology, although their beliefs differ and they are not the only ones studying and writing on the theme.

Dr. Paul Van Buren teaches at Temple University, is an ordained Episcopal clergyman but chooses not to preach or administer the sacraments of that church. If I understand his point of view at all, he maintains that when using the measurement of positivism – that is, knowledge must be validated by experience in some functional way, nothing meaningful can be said about the word, “God,” that there is no exactness that can be assigned to it so that any discourse can be maintained which is tested discourse. The author of the New Yorker article quotes Van Buren as saying, “My own view is that God as an absolute has been dissolved. I don’t think God is on vacation or that the Bible God is relevant to anything.” Dr. Van Buren dispenses with God, but holds to Jesus. His basic linguistic measurement is shown in these words: “Jesus, son of God and what have you – my interest is in seeing how these terms function, what they accomplish, what difference it makes whether one denies these terms or subscribes to them. They are saying the most they could about a man.” (ibid)

When Van Buren was asked whether his is a Christian, he answered that he wouldn’t make an issue of it, “I am trying to raise a more important issue: whether or not Christianity is fundamentally about God or man.”

Thomas Altizer is an advocate of a different approach. He is not concerned with linguistic analysis to aid meaning in discourse, but he asserts that God was once alive and died. Dr. Altizer teaches at Emory University in Atlanta and acquired additional publicity when public attention to his “God is Dead” theology came at a time when Emory University was launching a capital funds drive. Some of the prospective givers of large gifts were somewhat agitated and were threatening not to sign pledge cards unless Dr. Altizer was dismissed from the faculty.

I happened to listen to a radio interview with Dr. Altizer and he did not seem disturbed at the threats, confident that academic freedom would continue to prevail at Emory; and I hope he is right.

In his theology, he insists he is not speaking figuratively or of ideas of God that have died, but that God was alive at one time in history, was the creator of the world, was a personal being, not a force or process, and He died. If I understand Dr. Altizer correctly, he said that God was in Christ and therefore God died on the cross when Jesus was crucified. This was an actual historical event, he maintains. Up to this point, I think I understand him, but I lose him, when like Van Buren he insists on holding to Jesus Christ, even though he contends that traditional Christian forms prevent an understanding of the “contemporary Jesus” (?) And I have to pass without comment when he writes, “Christian theology must proclaim the death of God if it is to witness the Word of faith...” and again, “If ours is truly a history in which God is no longer present, then we are called upon not simply to accept the death of God with stoic fortitude, but rather to will the death of God with the passion of faith.” (CHRISTIAN CENTURY, p. 1351-1415)

Dr. William Hamilton is on the faculty of Colgate Rochester Divinity School and his “Death of God” theology is one of passive rejection of old theological language. In his words, “atonement and redemption, regeneration, the Holy Ghost, the cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship, all these have become so problematic and so remote that we hardly dare speak of them ... our Christianity today will be confined to praying for and doing right by our fellow men. Christian thinking, speaking and organization must be reborn out of this praying and this action.” (quoted by Ilion Jones, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 11/20/64)

Dr. Hamilton, like his colleagues holds to the necessity of holding to Jesus as an article of faith. But not as the Christ, not as a historical personality, but as the ethical model for those commitments in the human struggle to which we should be faithful and for which we should act. As he wrote, “we do not know, we do not adore, do not possess, do not believe in God ... We are not talking about the absence of the experience of God, but about the experience of the absence of God.” (quoted by J. Robert Nelson, CHRISTIAN CENTURY, p. 1414)

The New Yorker article mentions a rather irreverent jibe which may be include of what these three men hold in common: “There is no God and Jesus is His Son.”

That there should be this healthy radicalism in Christian thought is creating and encouraging, as far as I am concerned. I can see intellectual growth and new theological resolutions brewing in this ferment of God-talk. Some persons seem alarmed, however. Erwin Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor wrote that he had received a letter from a lady in California who was worried about the “Death of God” theologians, for she inquired, “Are they communists? Shouldn’t the F.B.I. do something about it?”

Some believe that the present upheaval in theology was more artistically expressed in Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot.” The two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for Godot:

Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
Estragon: Ah (pause despairingly) What’ll we do? What’ll we do?
Vladimir: There’s nothing we can do.
Estragon: But I can’t go on like this.

As far as I know, Samuel Beckett never identified Godot with God; and the play ended with the characters mired in their mournful waiting. But whether the playwright intended it or not, he identified with at least one of the moods in theological circles. The God of Genesis who molded man from common clay has been gone since the acceptance of the theory of evolution. The God who managed the three-story Universe and flung the stars into their places began to disappear with Copernicus and Einstein finished it off. There are many who believe that the “inner God,” the still small voice, the intuitive spark, was explained away by Freud and his successors. So people wait for some new and believable advent of God, but when all is said and done, the expectations are vague, depressed and uncertain as the the hopes of Vladimir and Estragon.

Just as an aside, one can raise the question, is an experience real because it is not subject to verification? The artist may not be able to express in functional statements the creative surge that produced paint on canvas in novel, visual form. The composer may not be able to state in words that can be verified what experience he was creating to be reproduced in intricate, intermeshings of multilevel tones and sounds. But can we state dogmatically that the experiences of the artist and composer have no validity – for them at least?

I’m sure I do not fully understand the “Death of God” theologians. Therefore it may be unfair to put it this way, but are they saying, “Old beliefs won’t do, but let’s keep all Christians together by keeping them under one large “Christian” umbrella which has such skillfully constructed ribs and artfully designed fabric that atheistic Christians and God-believing Christians can huddle together with not many aware of the astonishing differences in belief? The theologians who write for the journals that are read by other theologians and seminarians can conduct radical, even explosive discourse, while the people in the churches will have little awareness that what they believe literally or even symbolically, the theologians also using the words Jesus Christ, disbelieve literally and contend that the symbols no longer point to anything meaningful? Is this not like the nightmare concept that George Orwell made famous in his novel 1984 - “doublethink?” “Doublethink refers to the power of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting them both.” In Orwell’s novel, “doublethink” was a means of totalitarian political control. I’m certain that such technique is not the intention whatever of the “Death of God” theologians, but in a religious framework, that is the way it may work out.

It is at this point that one may inquire whether the “Death of God” theologies are taking over the frontier advance in religious thinking, which Unitarians and Universalists have maintained for a couple of hundred years. Is there identity between the “Death of God” theologies and the varieties of religious thought within our movements – liberal theism, naturalism, humanism, agnosticism?

It seems to me that while the scholarship of the “Death of God” theologians may be excellent, when they hold to Christian symbols, the Christian Christ, etc., they either demonstrate a lack of candor or an unwillingness to carry out the full implications of their radically revised beliefs. If God is dead, then to go on maintaining a Christology is a rather obscure way of announcing radical theological change. In Unitarian Universalist societies, the discussions we have had for a generation about Humanism vs. Theism have at least had some virtue in that “yes” has meant “yes” and our “no”[has meant “no”] as far as the traditional sayings and symbols are concerned. Permit me to cite two examples of the contrast between obscurity and candor. Paul Tillich was one of the trenchant and profound thinkers of modern time. But when he defined the word “God,” his definitions can mean all things to all people. For example, “The name of this infinite and inexhaustible ground of history is God. That is what the word means, and it is to that which the words ‘Kingdom of God’ and ‘Divine Providence’ point. And if these words do not have much meaning for you, translate them, and speak of the depth of history, of the ground and aim of our social life, and of what you take seriously without reservations in your moral and political activities. Perhaps you should call this depth hope, simply hope. For if you find hope in the ground of history, you are united with the great prophets who were able to look in the depths of their times, who tried escape it, because they could not stand the horror of their visions and yet who had the strength to look to an even deeper level and there to discover hope.” (quoted NEW YORKER, issue 11/13)

What I take seriously in my political and moral life may not be what you take seriously. Only confusion can result if each one of us says we both believe in God, because we may think there is identity in our beliefs when actually there is not.

Contrast the quote from Tillich with the words written long ago by courageous, wise Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) quoted p. 383 Selections from Philosophy:

“My only consolation lies in the reflection that however bad our posterity may become, so far as they are held by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe, because it may be to their advantage, they will not have reached the lowest depths of immorality.”

Many of us will follow the continuing theological discussion with great interest, but as long as obscurity prevails because of the reluctance to let go of the old concepts, even though no longer believable, we should not feel pre-empted. Rather we shall continue to advocate that religion can make sense; continue to hope that plain statements in the context of freedom will have enduring appeal for at least a minority of those persons who have given thought to this experience we call “religion.” We hope that we shall always be hospitable to innovations and creative re-thinking, or we would share Walter Lippmann’s opinion when he said, “Indeed though sometimes the evolution of ideas is rapid, and sometimes it is slower, we may say that the need and the ability to re-think and re-learn is the hallmark of a free society.”

One thing more – there is a parallel question implied in this radical theological approach which deserves more attention than the theological inquiry, “Is God dead?” These thinkers directly and by implication are asking, “Can man live?” I have commented earlier that one of the stimuli to this whole theological re-thinking was the catastrophic experiences of the 20th century – nuclear threat, over-population, the rightful rising expectations of persons in minority groups – these and many more critical problems trouble the conscience and threaten the very existence of the human family.

The “Death of God” theologians have not fashioned their reflections in an ivory tower; they have been wrestling with the real, obstinate, ambivalent nature of human society. Professor Rowlingson of Boston University observed, “Much of the Death of God thrust has actually been directed against the alleged failure of the church as an institution to live up to its ideals.”

Although I have difficulty following the thought of Dr. Altizer generally, he is quite clear when he writes, “To speak of the Death of God as a final and decisive event is to open oneself to the horizon of our history as the full avenue of faith.” (quoted THEOLOGY TODAY, p. 382)

We, too, should be convinced that effective religion is contemporaneous, finds its justification in the kind of persons we become because of its influence and the nature of the issues to which we give our attention. When Altizer speaks of “The concrete factuality of Time and Space as the locus of redemption” should we not say Amen to that?

Or take Dr. William Hamilton – although I don’t know him personally, I did know him by reputation as a person sensitive to ethical demands and responsive to moral issues. For example he wrote, (NEW YORKER, p. 142), “Jesus Christ is best understood not as either the object or ground of faith and not as a person or community but simply as a place to be, a standpoint. That place, of course, alongside the neighbor, being for him ... Today for example he is the Negro community in its struggle.”

William Hamilton not only said this, he behaves it. I recall that he was the CR faculty member who headed up a delegation of TS students who went to Mississippi after the three civil rights workers were murdered. Hamilton is asking the parallel question, “Will man live?” and attempting to be part of that answer.

Hamilton also wrote: “Radical theology is both describing and relating itself to a new feeling of hope and optimism in American life today, a conviction that substantive changes in the life of men can and will be made.” Again I have a recollection that he is not bashful in expressing what this implies in our lives today. I do not have the clipping but he created a minor furor when he stated plainly in print that northern cities, including the one he lived in specifically were too comfortable in their acceptance of discrimination, poverty and other conditions which limit the full lives of millions of people. He jarred the complacency of many who thought the South should mend its ways, but who had given little thought to conditions within their own cities in the North.

There are many of us who do not follow easily the theological convolutions of the “God is Dead” debate. But all of us, whatever our theism, atheism, or any variety of either, can speak to the question, “Will man live?”

We speak to that question by what we say about the human family in the world today. We speak to that question by what we do within our capacity in the world today. We speak to that question by the kind of persons we are in the world today.

An Actress and a Better World

November 25, 1965
Plainfield

An Actress and a Better World

Recently, actress Dorothy Malone recovered from illness so serious that her heart stopped beating two or three times during several hours of surgery necessary to remove massive blood clots from her lungs. For five days following the operation, she was unconscious; and death was more of a probability than life.

Her convalescence was painful and prolonged, but she commented recently, “All the colors of the world look bright to me now.”

Life is like that, isn’t it? Thirst creates the sweetest water. We rarely appreciate living when things go smoothly; when pain is absent and danger remote. But when we have survived a difficult ordeal of body or mind, then it is that we experience a renewed awareness of that for which we should be thankful:

The blue dark, green light sea
The fair sky and the storm cloud
The rhythm of sun and rain
The alternates of frost and thaw
The pulse of seedtime and harvest
The chatter of children and the murmur of the aged
The sense of achievement when there is strength to strive for goals
The contentment known when we can rest from the work of a hard, long and useful day.
The blessing of parents; the homecoming of children.

Even when we have not been closely brushed by the hand of death or the touch of disaster, may it be that we will be more aware of the priceless gift of life.

May there stir within us thankfulness for human love, creation, growth care.

For it is because the gift of life is so great – that sorrow is keen when we lose someone.

It is because of the potential of life is so productive that tragedy strikes deeply.

It is because the possibilities of life are so rare that disaster is hard and bitter.

Each of us would create our own variations on the theme of thanksgiving. But create in us a sense of life’s magic so that “the colors will look brighter” to us all.

In these annual moments of harvest home, moments with tentacles deep in primeval human culture and emotion, may the colors look brighter as we pause and give thanks for the life that is ours;

thanks for the world in which we live;

and beyond all the transient differences of philosophy and theology, thanks for this universe, our home – our home from which we can never be separated, whether as tissue, mineral, ashes, vapor or dust, for these are all part of us; and we part of them; and our kinship to totality is basic and beyond annihilation.

The Providential Seed Corn – and the Puzzle of Thankfulness

November 24, 1965
Plainfield

Also,
November 20, 1977
Lakeland

The Providential Seed Corn – and the Puzzle of Thankfulness

In November – December 1620, before deciding to settle Plymouth, the Pilgrims reconnoitered other parts of Cape Cod. In his unorthodox book of the Pilgrim adventure, SAINTS AND STRANGERS, George Willison has a fascinating chapter, “Babes in the Wilderness.” Monday, the 13th of November, 1620, was a day when the women went ashore to wash the heaps of clothes and bedding soiled in the long voyage. Sentries guarded them while excited children ran up and down the beach. Some men repaired the longboat; others dug clams on the tidal flats to make a succulent feast.

Two days later, sixteen men led by Captain Myles Standish, set off to explore the best possible place of settlement. Soon they glimpsed five or six Indians, whom the Pilgrims called “Savages,” but the Indians darted off into the woods. The Pilgrims pursued; and if the native Americans had hostile intentions, nothing could have been easier than an ambush. But there was no trap.

Near what is now Truro, on Cape Cod, Captain Standish and his company came on several clearings which the Indians had used as cornfields. They noticed sand piles covered with grass rugs, which although the first pile they investigated was a grave, others proved to be underground enclosures for corn stored in large baskets – three or four bushel capacity. This of course was the Indian seed corn being stored for next year’s crop. The Pilgrims simply helped themselves to other people’s property without permission and with no compensation. Willison writes, “This was just plain larceny of course, but the Pilgrims were inclined to regard it as another special providence of God. And in a sense it was, for without this seed corn the would have had no crops the next year and all would have starved to death. As it was, they just barely managed to squeeze through.” (p. 150)

When one thinks about it, this is a variation on a thanksgiving theme, is it not?

Can taking other people’s property, just because one needs it, be called the “providence of God?” The question may seem irreverent, because haloes have been shining over Pilgrim memories for quite a while, but supposed it happened to you today? Suppose some ragged invaders of a different skin color helped themselves to your stores of food at the beginning of Winter? And it was food you could not possibly replace? The Pilgrims were people of the Book – the Bible, we are told. What happened to the commandment “Thou shalt not steal?” Judgment at this distance of 345 years is unnecessary and futile.

But we might well think back with gratitude on the forbearance of the Americans to these invaders. Slaughtering the Pilgrim Company would not have been difficult. Continued harassment would have caused an utter failure of the Company, particularly that first dreadful Winter. Furthermore, the continued history of relations between colonizers, and later our nation with the Indians reflects little glory and much shame upon us for the broken treaties, the imposed degradation and nearly complete extinction of the American Indian cultures by the invaders from Europe.

So in moments such as these, we would feel some sense of repentance; we would not only admire the Pilgrim fathers, but also the Indian brothers, for without the forbearance and peaceful attitudes of these so-called “savages,” the Plimoth Plantation would have been no more enduring than that ill-fated colony of Englishmen on Roanoke Island in Virginia.

Such gratitude may be a variation on a theme, but an aspect we should recognize more than we do.

And so they survived.

Attached:
November 21, 1954
Bridgeport

The Religion of the Third Feast

When the settlers at Plymouth gathered the following year to give thanks, to feast and to enjoy the friendship of their Indian neighbors, an American tradition began. Because we are Americans, we are emotionally conditioned to think of Thanksgiving as a celebration born on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, [345] years ago. That’s a long time ago. The tradition of a government of free men under self-imposed laws that was born in the cabin of the Mayflower at the beginning of that great adventure was a heritage that grew and culminated in the American Revolution with goals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; was a tradition that then exerted a cleansing moral force on some of the infections of tyrannies that had hung on: slavery, voting franchise for everyone regardless of wealth or poverty or sex, free public education, and new in our time the legal removal by the Supreme Court of the stain of discrimination because of skin color. There are many ways that the Pilgrim tradition has enriched us, freed us, and put pressure on us to discipline ourselves.

But the Thanksgiving tradition is older than the Pilgrim’s feast in 1621. Thanksgiving is an ancient ceremony with roots in the very beginnings of our ancient Hebrew religious culture.

The reading from the old scripture of Leviticus (23/ 33/38) tells the story of the Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths). This scripture is the written record of ceremonies even more ancient. The Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkat (Succoth) was the celebration of the final harvest home of the fruits and olives. It was a time of rejoicing. In early times the whole Israelite population lived for a week in the open, sheltered by temporary tents of palm branches. As time went on their descendants observed the ceremony in various ways. When the temple was built in Jerusalem, Sukkat became a time of pilgrimage to that most holy place where sacrifice was offered. In many Jewish homes, even to this day, the rooms are decorated to take on the appearance of booths. Our harvest feast of Thanksgiving is in one sense the Americanized version of the old Hebrew feast of Tabernacles.

This Feast was the third of the great religious festivals when Pilgrims marched to Jerusalem. Christianity has many parallels. The first feast, Passover, became Easter for Christians. The second, the Feast of Weeks, is somewhat less known in America, but in most Christian countries is observed as Pentecost, or Whitsunday.

Thus the meaning of Thanksgiving stirs our feelings because not only does it appeal to our patriotism, and to our pride in the faith, courage and resourcefulness of the Pilgrims, but also because Thanksgiving stirs our religious feelings at depth. (More than that one of the days when human affection is ...)

In addition, the intensity of our emotions is reinforced because this Autumn ceremony of thankfulness for harvest home is not alone the product of our Hebrew and Pilgrim heritage.

The Pilgrims may have been as much inspired by the Indians as their Hebrew heritage. A. Hyatt Verrill, explorer, scholar of Indian cultures, author of many books, who died in New Haven just a few days ago, made a very interesting claim in his book, THE REAL AMERICANS. Mr. Verrill noted that the “Indians’ seasonal dances and ceremonies (were) numerous and of many kinds ... in the Eastern states the Algonquin tribes such as Delawares, Shawnees, Iroquois, Mohicans, Massachusetts ... and others hold a great autumnal or crop ceremonial feast. (Hundreds of years before the Pilgrims landed) The Indians gathered to give thanks to the Great Spirit and lesser deities for abundant crops, good hunting and fishing. Dances were held ... Drums of a special form were thumped .. A new fire symbolic of a fresh start in life was kindled and there was a great feast with venison roasting ears, wild turkeys, squash pumpkins, pudding.” Mr. Verrill believed that it was from this great Indian ceremony that we derive our Thanksgiving.

One of the most shameful, as well as least known sections of American history has been our inhuman treatment of the Indian tribes who lived on the North American continent when the Europeans began colonization. When history is looked at with some objectivity – when we forget the way we have been conditioned by the “western” movies and the lurid books – we become aware that the Indians of this continent were friendly and hospitable to the newcomers. They were far more friendly to the Europeans than the third and fourth generation Americans were to later immigrants from across the sea. The causes of so-called Indian massacres can be found in broken treaties, in natural retaliation against the brutality, ignorance and greed of the white men who came across the sea. If the Indians had not been friendly it is obvious that there could have been no settlements established.

When the Pilgrims held their great feast of thanks to God they were under the influence of Indian culture as well as Hebrew culture – and the culture of the American Indians was far more advanced than we have ever realized or admitted. The Indian tribes were deeply religious. For the most part they lived in peace with other tribes. Their family life was wholesome and taught high values to the growing children.

One of their Thanksgiving prayers has been translated thus:

“We give thanks for the corn and beans and quashes that give us life;
We give thanks for the wind which moves the air and blows away diseases;
We give thanks for the sun which has looked on us with a kindly eye;
We give thanks for the moon and stars which give us light when the sun is gone;
We give thanks to the Great Spirit, who is all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of his children.”

Furthermore, the religion of the third feast has even deeper roots than already described. Nearly all peoples, all over the world, have had harvest ceremonies and feasts. The wonder of growing things that are nourishing and pleasant to the taste has always gripped the imagination of human beings. Persons survive because of growing things. The record of history, and the events of pre-history which we can assume from tribal memories, folk songs and remnants of ancient ritual – all these confirm the intensity with which seedtime, growth and harvest have always captured the religious feelings of persons of all-time, everywhere.

As far as can be learned, not all harvest festivals were the same everywhere. Variations occurred because of such factors as the most important food crop, the climate, and the relative state of cultural advancement. However, the essential rituals in primitive harvest ceremonies were: 1) propitiatory rites, 2) observances to secure fertility, 3) the offering of first-fruits.

Most of our beliefs are survivals, refined and enlightened, of these primitive expressions. The universal elements of Thanksgiving or harvest festival still basically express the same emotions. We are false to our human heritage if we discard or ignore these basic feelings. But w are also traitor to humanity if we ignore the advances and enlightenment won for us by human beings who refined the barbarisms by unselfish acts and by radiant influence, causing more light to shine on ancient symbols and sacrifices.

Thus the religious meaning of Thanksgiving can best be apprehended by looking at the ancient and primitive ways, and then taking them to our hearts with the refinements of the best of civilization.

First the people of the pre-historic past observe the ingathering of the crops with propitiatory rites. They believed that all things were occupied by spirits. There was the corn-spirit; the tree spirit; the spirit of every vegetable. The people believed that when these were taken for food, the spirits would be angered unless they were placated. So ceremonies grew around the harvest. The corn spirit had to receive some attention or it might be angry at the persons who harvested the golden ears. The vine and tree had to be placated when the grapes and fruit were taken for human use.

Out of this primitive fear of the spirits of growing things has grown, gradually, the spirit of thankfulness to the Power people call God. This world, our home, furnishes us with food, warmth and shelter. There is a spirit of mysterious growth. It does not matter too much, I suppose, if we call that spirit God, Yahweh, Allah, Manitou, or whatever. In the city, particularly, where we are too far from the soil, we have a particular need to remember to be grateful for life and for the harvest which sustains it. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for harvest home – for harvest home means life for us and all we love.

The second of the worship elements that the primitives observed was the ritual to insure that the fields would be fertile another year. The rites were primitive. Many peoples included the sacrifice of a human being, the ashes of the sacrificed one being scattered on the fields so that the following year a good crop would grow. As persons gradually became conscious of the value of human life, there was refinement in ritual until animals were sacrificed, and as time went on even that custom was abolished.

But even though the sacrifice of human life no longer would be tolerated, the basic obligation of conservation and restoration of the “holy earth” is ours nevertheless. More and more we must realize that the organic elements of the soil must be restored if abundant, nourishing crops are to be continued. We live in a world where the net population is increasing at a fearful rate. If ever our world is to see a relaxing of tensions between the “have” and the “have-not” peoples, there must be an adequate food supply. Conservation of the soil, forests, water supply, restoration of the mineral elements of the soil removed by crops, all measures which will increase food supplies must be taken in our world if human life is to continue.

(Constant struggle between competing interests)

The battle that Theodore Roosevelt fought and won for conservation in early 20th century America can be lost in our day if we forget the necessity of keeping forest reserves, game preserves, water supplies flood-control and power achievements beyond the power of greedy, short-sighted men.

[Editor’s note: the following is in the Bridgeport sermon, but apparently excised for Plainfield and Lakeland:

There are additional perils. The new noun in our language, “fall-out” refers to the fact that as a result of atomic and hydrogen experiments, many places in the world, even our own country, have experienced rainfalls of radioactive dust. So far, we are told, except for the unlucky Japanese fishing vessels, these “fall-outs” have not been [of] sufficient intensity to represent a danger to human life. A good many people, even the conservative and militant Winston Churchill, are greatly concerned that if these fission experiments continue, the fall-outs will be deadly enough to poison our soil, to make the fruit and all growing things, for which we are thankful, deadly for human beings.

We may have to make a different kind of sacrifice than the primitive peoples to [ensure] the fertility of the earth. We may have to take steps that will halt the rain of death; even if these steps mean that we may have to revise our accepted ideas about individual sovereignty and our notion that we have the right to tell the rest of the world to go hang.]

The third primitive ritual observed in the shadowy and ancient past was the offering of the first fruits to the god and gods. Not only were the fruit and vegetables brought to the altar; and the fatted calves burned in the altar flames; but in more fearsome days the very first child of a man and woman was consecrated to a fiery death in the gaping mouth of Moloch.

Early peoples felt these heartbreaking acts were necessary to appease the anger and desires of the gods they worshiped. No longer do we roast our first-born at the altar of religion. (Although the Mars still receives his tributes). We do not decorate our altars with fruit and vegetables. When churches did, of late years it was for the purpose of feeding those who were in need.

As men advanced in understanding they recognized that rather than destroying humans and vegetables on the altar as a thing pleasing to God, they increased their responsibility for the welfare of their fellow human beings. (Amos: “I hate, despise, but let, righteousness,” etc.)

Thus the Hebrews in their Feast of the Tabernacles refined and humanized the meaning of the festival. In addition to the more original elements of harvest ritual and thanks, the Feast of Tabernacles became the occasion when the Hebrews remembered with gratitude the wanderings of their ancestors who roamed the wilderness for many years, sheltered by tents. The booths (or tents) in houses or in the fields where the Israelites should dwell for 7 days in commemoration of the feast is a reminder to them that their ancestors thought enough of their unique religion and culture to want to be freed from the chains of slavery; to venture into unknown perils for the sake of freedom and for the chance to live their lives in the way they believed to be right. “Let my people go,” said Moses to Pharaoh. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, the people went anyway. They sought freedom. Their courage is one of the great parts of our heritage as well as the heritage of the Jewish people.

Philo, the Alexandrian, one of the greatest Jewish philosophers who lived [around] 200 BC, said of this harvest festival of tabernacles, “it teaches equality, the first principle and beginning of justice ... (as well as) the witnessing of the perfection of all fruits of the year, and the giving of thanks to the being who has made them perfect.”

Thus the first-fruits in our day must be a recognition that life is given to us for moral uses: that God is best served by serving the needs of our fellow-men.

We are all tempted at times to be like the boy in the nursery rhyme (with a little poetic license)

“Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner,
Eating a (Thanksgiving) pie.
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum,
And said, what a great boy am I.”

But that is not the best of our heritage. From the Jewish people, and from their moral growth that added justice and righteousness to the necessary components of the harvest festival came also the idea of the synagogue. This is a time in Jewish congregations when the institution of the synagogue receives special recognition. We would do well to be glad that the Jewish people evolved this institution for it was a fore-runner of real democracy. In the synagogue all men were equal in the sight of God; no priest, no person or privilege could claim special distinction; all souls were equal as they sought to learn more of what religion is and what religion does. The church fellowship has incorporated many of the best ideas of the synagogue; democracy in church policy; the value of every person; the necessity of learning the facts of religion as well as learning to respond emotionally to religion.

So amid next Thursday’s celebration of family, food and the spiritual fragrance of happiness together, may it be that we will experience a drive to real thanksgiving – be part of conserving a world of hope for all persons; a drive to be working members of a world synagogue dedicated to learning more so that all people may obtain justice and a satisfactory life in which everyone can rejoice and give thanks in freedom to the God who is the creator of all persons everywhere in the world.

Rediscovery of America

November 21, 1965
Plainfield

Rediscovery of America

[Editor’s Note: The most recent evidence strongly points to the Vinland Map being a forgery. Having said that, it is clear from other that Columbus was not the first to discover the New World; Viking settlements in Newfoundland predate Columbus’ journey by centuries.]

Adopting what seemed to many to be deplorable timing, Yale University on the day before Columbus Day, October 12, in this year of 1965 announced the publication of the “Vinland Map” which supposedly confirms the hypothesis that the Norsemen discovered the North American mainland somewhere around 1000. If so, Columbus did not discover America in 1492, but re-discovered it. I would like to place this controversy before you, not to settle historical debates, but rather to suggest that the contentiousness which this announcement provoked should remind us that religion should help us understand not only human foibles and human vanities, but also, religion should help us find for ourselves the positive and negative features of ancient discovery. We seek this understanding of historical human events not to debunk history and throw mud on honored names, but to establish directions for our ways and guidance in our moral problems of man and society.

No matter whether or not one accepts the new evidence which gives credit to the Norsemen for discovering North America, the impress of Columbus on our culture will not be eradicated easily or soon. Our cities are marked with Columbus Avenues, Columbus streets, and Columbus circles. Columbus, Indiana, Columbus, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio are lettered on our maps. Our children sing, “Columbus the tem (sic?) of the ocean,” and our venerable statesmen meet in the District of Columbia. Columbia University is one of the great schools and the Columbia River is one of the mighty rivers of America. There would seem to be some awkwardness and much strangeness if we were to talk about Erickson Circle, Leif the Lucky, Ohio and if our judicial, legislative and executive branches of the government were to have their mail addressed to the District of Eric the Red.

In spite of natural Latin loyalties to Columbus and the voluminous press notices given the announcements and reactions, five weeks ago, most scholarly thought has agreed that there were voyages which reached the North American mainland as early as 1000 a.d. The famous historian, Samuel Eliot Morrison observed that this has been generally known since 1837. The scholarly studies have been in the direction of discovering if the Vikings had precursors in America. The Vinland Map, highly publicized by Yale, indicates that Leif Erickson had a partner, Bjarni Herjulfsson. One can speculate right away – maybe Bjarni’s real name was Barney, adding to the belief that the earliest discoverers of America were Irish monks. According to the legends of Brendan of Clonfert, son of Finnloger, they were in southerly parts of what is now the U.S. as early as 850. If one seeks to confuse the matter even more, there is some guessing that the Chinese had a colony in the Pacific Northwest as early as 449.

It is said that when Yale announced the Vinland Map, comedian Jimmy Durante, loyal to his background, remarked that “when Columbus arrived, he played only to Indians, there were no Norwegians in the audience.” This should be a reminder as Morrison wrote, “that the real discoverers of America were the Indians, who, tens of thousands of years before the Norsemen paid their brief visits had spread throughout the continent and established at least three great civilizations.”

So Columbus, Erik, Leif, Bjarni and all the others were re-discoverers of America.

But Columbus was the most important. His voyages are historically unquestioned. More than that, because his diaries are remarkable revelations of both greatness and meanness, what Columbus valued in the America he discovered can be of guidance to us in the America we are discovering.

Columbus has been honored as the brave, visionary explorer who sailed westward beyond the Gates of Hercules, left the Azores in the wake of his tiny fleet; and when he next hailed land, he carved his niche in history as the discoverer of America. He didn’t reach his objective, which had been China; and in the land he discovered, he passed over the real treasures and marked the islands of the Caribbean with the ugly scars of cruelty and the enslavement of human beings. This is said not in judgment of Columbus, for he was a product of his harsh times, not an enlightened humanitarian deeply convinced of the rights of all human beings. The voyages of Columbus although eventually ill-starred, were courageous adventures. When we reflect on the gold and lands he, his officers and sponsors were after and on the ways they behaved, we find encapsulated some of the great virtues and cruel evils that man exhibits.

When one reads the diary of Columbus and considers some of the deeds of this great Admiral, one cannot help but be struck by the grandeur and misery of man. The following lines from Columbus’ notes on his first voyage as his vessel was closely following the coastline of Cuba (Juana): “This island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree and this island is extremely so. In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous. Its lands are high, and there are in it many sierras and very lofty mountains, beyond comparison with the island of Tenerife. All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes, and all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky. And I am told they never lose their foliage, as I can understand, for I saw them as green and lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were flowering, some bearing fruit, and some in another stage, according to their nature. And the nightingale was singing and other birds of a thousand kinds in the month of November.”

Yet the great explorer who could respond with such poetic sensitivity to the great natural beauty of a new world, was the same man who began the West Indian Slave Trade, capturing natives and shipping them back to Spain. On June 24, 1495, 5 vessels crowded with slaves followed others who had previously carried their human cargoes of misery. The same man who rejoiced in nightingales in November tore men, women and children away from their lovely island homes. Weighted with irons and imprisoned in dark, cramped, airless holds, they were not even given a last look at the beautiful lands they were forced to leave forever.

All this becomes more pathetic, even inexplicable, when one considers the quality of the people Columbus enslaved. They were not savages who would have been better off as “Christians,” even though chained. Columbus himself testifies, (p. 197-8), to their character and hospitality, “It is true that after they have been reassured and have lost their fear, they are so guileless and so generous with all they possess that no one would believe it who has not seen it. They never refuse anything they possess if it be asked of them. On the contrary they invite anyone to share it, and display as much love as if they would give their hearts and whether the thing be of value or whether it be of small price, at once with whatever trifle of whatever kind it may be that is given them, with that they are content....

“... and they do not know any creed and are not idolaters, only they believe that power and good are in the heavens.

“... and this does not come because they are ignorant. On the contrary they are of acute intelligence, and are men who navigate all these seas, so it is amazing how good an account they give of everything.”

If only Columbus, instead of enslaving these bright, good people had tried to discover the secret of their generosity, the social origins of their good dispositions, the religious development of their faith in the power and good of the universe. Such findings would have taught us much, for America is emphatically being re-discovered in 1965 and all the recent years; and much more daring explorations are called for or we perish. If an explorer who knew nothing of us should put in at our harbors, would he find a consistent pattern of generosity, friendliness and a prevailing folk religion of simplicity and goodness?

True, our social services, charities, community enterprises, corporate organizations for production, banking, trade, our provisions for material security speak volumes for our national acceptance of responsibility for the welfare of the citizenry. We have considerable zeal for the education of all our people, along with confusion about the aims of education and the proper seat of responsibility for its accomplishment. A modern Columbus might be overwhelmed by the pile-up of wealth; and attracted by our passionate striving for recognition and status.

But other Americas are being discovered, too. We are discovering in these post-WW2 years that our national community is shadowed by fear of widespread development of nuclear weapons and increasing danger of their use by some nation.

On Sept. 17, 1492, Columbus recorded that the seamen began to murmur with fear. Nearly fifty days of sailing Westward without sighting land aggravated their fears of the unknown. These fears had been compounded by the strange deflections of the compass needle, by the startling streak of a large meteor and by the fearful experience of the Saragossa Sea, where the floating maze of sea-growth seemed almost like a supernatural barrier. But the Admiral kept sailing westward in spite of the community of fear aboard the little vessels.

We are re-discovering fear of the unknown in our day – fear of unknown events and impulsive fingers on atomic buttons. We are discovering we are a long day’s voyage from old and comfortable ways. The future is unknown and the compass needle of international prediction is fluctuating erratically. We are discovering to our chagrin that our country is looked upon by many others in the world as a threat to peace. Perhaps we ought to study the charts of living more closely. Bishop Robinson of Woolwich, England, famous for his “Honest to God” book wrote equally provocatively in CHRISTIAN MORALS TODAY, “... the unbreakable rules propounded by Christians always turn out to be about sex and not about war.”

Did we not re-discover America in the news stories this week when it was disclosed that the Secretary General of the U.N. had secured approval from North Vietnam to sit down and talk peace, but that our State Department had flatly rejected the opportunity? The best that can be said about such national policy is that an astonishing lack of candor has been demonstrated. If the North Vietnamese can be called intransigent and stubborn, then we have earned a similar label in the eyes of much of the world.

When the Committee on Social Responsibility moved us so deeply with their service, were they not portraying an America whose rediscovery is laced with both optimism and pessimism?

Depending upon one’s sophistication, it is either shocking or ironic that when Southern Rhodesia declared its independence of the British Commonwealth in order to prevent the African majority from obtaining liberties, rights and the vote, their Southern Rhodesia Declaration of Independence copied the phrases from our Declaration of Independence. It may be painful to our pride, but perhaps the white Rhodesians, who will not give up power and special privilege, chose our Declaration of Independence because, although our Founding Fathers wrote of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, these were not for all Americans. Indians and Negroes, for example were excluded and the consequences in human suffering have been incalculable. In the one hundred eighty nine years since 1776, it has still not come home fully to us that unless human rights exist in actual practice for all persons, then to boast unseemly of our achievements of freedom for all is a snare and a delusion. We should be shocked to discover that Southern Rhodesia has modeled on our Declaration of Independence its national profession of constitutional freedoms but which actually are disenfranchisement. Perhaps if we are properly shocked, we may become more aware that each of us needs to discover in himself the courage and creativity to reduce the disproportion between the ideal and the actual in the dimension of equality of opportunity in employment, housing, education and justice.

U Thant, Secretary General of the U.N. is aware of the serious nature of the issue, writing in the April 65 issue of THE COURIER, “There is a clear prospect that racial conflict, if we cannot curb and finally eliminate it, will crow into a destructive monster compared to which the religious an ideological conflicts of the past and present will seem like family quarrels.”

There was another rediscovery of America in my experience this week. Like many persons, I have ... certain hunches and felt certain amounts of uneasiness about the engineered illusions of some varieties of advertising, but I was somewhat surprised to read excerpts from a speech made by Dean Robert O. Schultze last Wednesday to the annual meeting of National Advertisers. (See NY Times, 11/18/65). These comments really reveal more about us as consumers than they represent any indictment of advertising:

“We have long known that this (advertising) was no simple or straightforward venture.

“We need misinformation, we need illusion .... And much of contemporary advertising addresses itself to this need, to our need to be misled not only about products and services – how superior they are – but about ourselves – how successful, popular, handsome, beautiful, good we are or may become; and about life – how simple it is, how friendly, how full of pleasures and gustoes and rewards.”

Dr. Schultze said also that another function of advertising is that “it sensitizes us to the fact that our world is a highly manipulative one, and that getting along for many of us these days more and more involves the ability to manipulate, to sell, perhaps to con our children, our associates, our wives and husbands or subordinates and superordinates – and perhaps most of all – ourselves.”

But Dr. Schultze is not alarmed at all for he sees advertising “as a conservative element in society – one that provides a ballast, a stabilizing factor in a rapidly changing environment.”

Then the capstone of the quotes. “In this sense American advertising rather resembles the Baptist Church, the American Medical Association, the Republican Party, the American Legion and the Ivy League colleges.”

Are we now rediscovering an America where a major stabilizing force in our society is illusion and misinformation?

Just one more example: the other night, driving through the industrial complex on the way to NYC, the man with me asked, “where are the alabaster cities?” Of course we were thinking of Katherine Lee Bates’ great hymn – purple mountain majesties, the fruited plain, the shining and the gleaming alabaster cities. Perhaps we are a little late in discovering that the air is tainted, the waters polluted, the mountains scarified and the plains wasted.

Anyone can think of examples, A water engineer ... eloquent at an Adult Progress Committee describing our mismanagement of our most essential resource – clean water. But long ago I read that Lake Tahoe, one of the most beautiful bodies of water on our planet was rapidly becoming polluted because of excess commercial expansion and inadequate sewage regulations. Conservation and beautifying the landscape is now receiving considerable Federal attention, but some areas may be beyond reclamation.

Now this foregoing section on the rediscovery of America may have seemed like a Roman candle, popping off briefly about Vietnam, Southern Rhodesia, advertising, pollution and waste – popping off with a spark, then fading and falling into frustration and inertia – is that the way a sermon ends? Well, no one person can handle many of the problems of modern man unless he plunges only into the most shallow soundings of each. Few, if any of us can charge off in all directions and be any more effective than was Don Quixote. There is nothing more frustrating than to be engaged with all problems and [be] master of none.

Furthermore, I surmise that few experiences can be more irritating than to be among a captive audience and be expected to listen to a moralizing preacher embark on a Cook’s tour of people’s alleged faults and presumed failings, while he blithely entertains a completely unrealistic view of the interests, energies and moral convictions of most of the people.

Yet, what would you? Any look at any part of history discloses the plain reality that the higher values must be maintained with considerable labor by overworked and overstressed minorities in the midst of uncaring or overwhelmed majorities.

In Act 4, Sc. [4], Hamlet soliloquizes,

“What is a man
If is chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed?

Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus’d.”

Recently I heard a story – somewhat silly – but making a point: an inexperienced officer was drilling a squad of soldiers in a field that ended abruptly at sheer cliffs that descended 1000 feet or more to the rocky shore of the English Channel. After a series of squads left and squads rights, etc., the inexperienced officer found he had the squad marching toward the cliff; and couldn’t think of the proper command which would turn them about and prevent disaster. As he stood, tongue-tied, the corporal spoke up, “For goodness sake, sir, say something, if only ’goodbye.’”

So it is with the numerous, painful problems and dilemmas in the re-discovered American – nuclear powered, urbanized, tense, increasingly automated in a social sea rising with a great tide of expectations from those who have never had their rightful opportunity for equal liberties, security and self-fulfillment. Those who are concerned ought to say something. If a person can not speak and be informed on many issues, he can on a few – or one. Every important issue needs the strength of more participation, if only one more. The higher values are maintained by minorities who work in the midst of apathetic or callous majorities.

We will rediscover America for ourselves as individuals when on one, or more vital issues. We make our knowledge adequate, our voice heard and our influence felt. The last verse of William De Witt Hyde’s hymn (311) compresses the meaning in four lines,

“Since what we choose is what we are,
And what we love, we yet shall be,
The goal may ever shine afar -
The will to win it makes us free.”