When Convictions Are Tested

September 10, 1967
Plainfield

When Convictions Are Tested

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.” These words seem more accurate today than when Abraham Lincoln uttered them in the crisis of his time. This is a time when convictions are being tested. There are signs that many persons have reacted to the explosive Summer in ways that:

raise doubts about the strength with which convictions are held about man – every person – and his worth;

raise doubts about the possibility of consistent progress;

raise doubts about the reality of the promises many persons have made affirming the need for change in the social order.

The war in Vietnam not only continues but increases in intensity; the number of casualties, American and Asian mounts to ever-new statistics, military and civilian. For the record, my opposition to that war is unchanged. What have we gained; or can possibly gain that will justify the human cost?

When the Rochester slums erupted in disturbances in 1964, the comment was made that if such conflict and violence happened there, it could happen anywhere in our country. There has been sad confirmation of the prediction. Not only our own Plainfield, but also Newark and Detroit – to mention only the two most grievous examples – have been the setting for death and destruction. As one who accumulated a file of clippings, yea thick, I can also affirm that an accurate account has yet to be compiled of the beginning and
proceedings of these troubles.

While I do not yet have sufficient perspective, let alone facts, to make a comprehensive statement on the troubled Summer in the cities, there are certain observations that can be made. Many of these are from resources gathered by Dr. Homer Jack, Director of the Dept of SR of the U U A:

“During 1967, up to August 11, there were riots in 31 American cities: 80 persons dead, 2056 injured, 11094 arrested.

“Many Americans because of the rebellions feel a new determination to remove the many causes of violence.

“Time Magazine wrote that the violence was ‘one of the gravest social dilemmas the nation has ever faced; what is needed is proof positive to the Negro that he can find justice and hope in America.’”

“Prof. Daniel Moynihan, ‘the outcome is likely to be determined by persons of good-will who actively desire to see American society continue to succeed, who accept the fact that it has in ways failed, and realize that only great and costly effort can reverse the course of events.’

“While Negroes in Newark and Detroit were doing violence to society characterized as White, Gov. George Romney reported that in Detroit it was integrated looting with
Whites and Negroes taking part, sometimes side by side.’

“A study released by the Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence (Brandeis) reported that riots tended to occur ‘as a result of the interaction of two factors; the grievance level of residents of the ghetto and the inflammatory nature of the event which precipitates the initial disturbance. The higher the grievance level, the slighter the event required to trigger the riot.’

“This same study disclosed the results of a poll of Negroes to find principal grievances:
1) Discontent over job opportunities
2) Impatience with the opening of housing opportunity
3) General dissatisfaction with local government efforts to solve these problems.”

These times test convictions about what one believes man is; how progress can be achieved; what the innate dignity of every person deserves. Did you see the cartoon strip, "Small Society", last month, when pipe-smoking Dad is asking varsity-sweatered son, "What are your plans when you finish college?" Son answers, "I don't know. The future isn't what it used to be."

There was a time when Unitarians would recite, perhaps too complacently, that "we believe in the progress of mankind onward and upward forever." There was a time when Universalists would recite, perhaps too naively, that all mankind would be saved.

Perhaps there are those who are taking comfort that September is here, the hot months past, and that the human explosions will cease for a time in the precarious cities. Jeremiah's cry of grief can be recalled (8/20):

"The harvest is past, the Summer is ended
And we are not saved."

I am reminded also of the words Lionel Trilling wrote ("Freud and Literature" in THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION, p.53/4):

"When we think of the simple humanitarian optimism,which for two decades has been so pervasive, we must see that not only has it been politically and philosophically inadequate, but also that it implies, by the smallness of its view of the varieties of human possibility, a kind of check on the creative faculties."

We ought to be aware now, if never before, that the varieties of human possibility are more than previously assumed; that undeserved, imposed suffering does not lead
to sweetness and light; that rejection breeds hostility not acquiescence.

Convictions are tested when divisions become sharper and opinions are increasingly polarized. The temperate zones are narrower than they were before. The conflicts and disturbances have not only increased the militancy of Black people, but also brought to surface the underlying prejudice of many White people. There are reports that the number of requests for gun permits has increased markedly, building in guarantees that unless the root causes of riots are dealt with, the future has even more ominous possibilities than the immediate past.

The White liberal flounders. “White liberal” seemingly has become a term either of opprobrium or condescension or both. As one who still accepts the label as descriptive of my position and attitude, I hope I recognize also that the liberal approach may not have recognized sufficiently all the possibilities of human response –

that human resentments can be volatile.
that difficult problems do not have easy answers.
that self-destruction can be induced when oppression seems endless.
that there are brittle breaking-points to human patience.

Some of you were present a week ago last Wednesday evening when something of a miasma of depression or frustration closed in about us when anticipations were not realized. The meeting was called to discuss with N.J. Unitarians the possibility that the Reverend George Johnson (James J. Reeb Civil Rights Worker for the U U A) would be assigned for three months to this area – to establish communications with the areas where troubles occurred, to sort out the projects or efforts to which we might apply our resources and to help improve conditions and hasten progress in the struggle for an equal opportunity society.

Gloom closed in on the meeting when Homer Jack and Dwight Brown announced that since the meeting had been organized, because of an impending permanent assignment to Starr King School for the Ministry and the Oakland, Calif. community, the probability had developed that George Johnson would not be available for the proposed N.J. assignment. This cloud was not visibly dispersed when Homer Jack turned the discussion to the theme of what we might do rather than what George Johnson could do or try to do.

Perhaps we Unitarians, although we reject and ignore Christian theology, did hope for a Savior whose work we could endorse without much personal sacrifice and acquire thereby a somewhat eased conscience. Perhaps I am too severe on you and me in such an appraisal. In any event, those present gave many indications of blocked hopes. One of you suggested to me a sermon title that evening, "Is Unitarianism Necessary?" I'll accept that invitation next week, but meanwhile what should the hard experience of the testing of conviction do to us and prescribe for us?

First: Obvious to me as the troubles of Summer pyramided; and the ghastly war escalated without clarification of muddled motives and disarrayed facts, too many persons are insufficiently passionate about the priority of human values; less than fully persuaded about the superiority of an equal opportunity society.

On the level of verbal agreements, I find it a rare experience to encounter someone who says he disbelieves in the brotherhood of man; it is uncommon to meet anyone who denies the reality that 300 years of, first, explicit slavery and then, after 1864, exclusion, disinheritance from the American freedoms and subjection to unending humiliations are the root causes of the seething discontent of Black Americans. Almost every national organization has passed resolutions composed of excellent rhetoric framing noble ideals. But, somehow, like Hamlet's intentions, we become sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.

Were the passion for human values intense enough, we would not have been quiescent witnesses at the spectacle of the House of Rep. quickly passing an anti-riot bill but rejecting an anti-rat bill. Clamp down on rioters but not rats – is that the message?

Legislation has been needed; more is needed to establish and enforce human rights. Appropriations to implement legislation are needed if there is to be any alternative which will lessen substantially the social misery, poverty, despair in the city and the rural areas. But inner convictions of rightness and immediacy for changes in the social order are needed in the hearts of many more millions of persons than now seems to be the case. We ought to be able to understand the exasperation of the Japanese artist
cited by Alan Watts who yelled to his students, “What's the matter with you? Can’t you feel?”

The self is an achievement, not a gift. Neither bitter self-condemnations nor vain generalizations provide answers at levels that represent true understanding.

In Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES, (Vol. 1, p. 25), the author described a character thus:

"The Senator...was an intelligent man, who had made his way in life with a directness of purpose which paid no attention to all those stumbling blocks which constitute obstacles in men's paths, known as conscience, sworn faith, justice and duty; he had advanced straight to his object without swerving once in the line of his own advancement and his interest."

But widespread failure to feel for the disinherited is seldom, if ever attributable to such simplicities as unadulterated, conscious selfishness or self-interest.

Another insight is worth quoting as perhaps more wise, Broun & Leech in their Biography of the censorious reformer, Anthony Comstock, (Higgins & Read, p. 24):

"The Puritan hated the flesh in himself and he hated even more fiercely that flesh appearing as the vices of others. It is useless to tell a man to love his neighbor as himself; he hates so much of himself."

One more reference: in the Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (suddenly recalled) how in the past he had been asked, 'Why do you hate, so and so so
much?’ and he had answered ‘I'll tell you. He had done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick and ever since I have hated him.’

I know of no one who should feel emancipated from the need to more fully understand himself. In human experience, part of both necessary pain and unanticipated joy is the lifetime search for a self to live with. And I submit to you that one of the prime dimensions of a self to life with in our time is the measure of passion we feel for the persons in our human venture who have been denied the full measure of freedom, dignity and opportunity. As Roger Hall said at the meeting a week ago, Wed.,
"we must put our heart where our head is."

Second: But of course attitude without action is not only ineffective in changing the social order, but also will result inevitably in intolerable personal frustration. Dr. James Luther Adams, eminent Unitarian teacher of Social Ethics at Harvard Divinity School called attention (TAKING TIME SERIOUSLY) to the observation of Charles Pierce, American pragmatic philosopher of the 19th century, who proposed "that an idea becomes clear only when we determine the habits of behavior that follow from it." Whether or not we have or can sustain any measure of passion for the achievement of the full heritage of the worth of all persons in an equal opportunity society depends on how we behave in the institutions of the social order.

There are two varieties of behavior stemming from one's convictions which are unproductive. One is to become so confused by the complexities of community problems that one gives up and does nothing, A country-western singer described such persons as like the bottom half of a double boiler—all steamed up, but didn't know what was cooking. The other type of unproductive action is to become so driven that one rushes from one problem to another usually failing to reach depth or acquire influence in any issue.

Some of us are guilty of one type error; some of us the other. Some of you who are wiser may have long since decided that no one person can handle any quantity of difficult problems in able fashion. For most of us, our occupations and professions are organized in such ways that sustaining necessary obligations builds-in limitations on the available time and strength for volunteer action, even when many problems are crucial.

I, for one, feel the necessity of adopting a policy described by writer Harvey Swados as "The Inalienable Right of Selective Apathy." Swados wrote, (NYT) "What disconcerts is rather the assumption on the part of readers that a writer's indignation about the course of an immoral war implies equal indignation about the course of the projected neighborhood sewage lines. The more the literary man writes about war or political dishonesty, the more he is importuned to participate in school board elections and beautification projects. Like many another citizen, he finds himself forced – if not
because the range of his passions is limited, then simply from sheer self-defense – to indulge in selective apathy."

So I recommend. So I shall try myself – not to curtail action but to deepen it by being more thoroughly versed in fewer areas, rather than like the River Platte – a mile wide and a foot deep – to use Mark Twain’s famous simile.

Power was sacred to many pre-industrial civilizations. Mana, Orenda, Spirit – primitive man recognized mysterious force and sought to placate this power and bend it to his use by sacrifice, by magic, but ritual. This holds for the power to influence events in modern times and persuade those in political positions to make decisions which will change the trend and bring about peace and greater justice. Depth not width has greater leverage. Naturally, individual inclinations, feelings of competence, and affinity lead persons to choose different areas for their action. To believe otherwise is to ignore our variety of temperaments, training, and interests.

Although I will attempt to develop the thought at greater length at the time the Adult Programs schedule discussion of the UUA GOALS REPORT and Social Action and social stands, this seems to me to be a sound reason for a religious society conducting discussions, probings, challenges and taking a group position on important issues. When we maintain selective apathy and narrow our efforts individually, the need is even greater to share our information, studies, convictions and suggestions for actions with our peers in a religious community whose identity, whatever else it may be, must be with freedom, fellowship and human dignity. Such values are better achieved not in solitariness but in community. So I believe.

Our convictions are tested by our authentic inner attitude and the outward actions that follow from it. The most uncompromising judge of the results of these tests is one's own self.

The overwhelmingly central issues are world peace in a world of law and the struggle to end discrimination and deprivation at home in order to achieve in fact what our national constitution and the charter of the UN spell out in theory. "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,"

Will we survive?

There is an archaeological observation which for me becomes a parable for our time and life today: Almost four thousand years ago one of the three most notable early cultures was the Harappan civilization, located in what is now West Pakistan. The writing of the people has not yet been deciphered; the origins and identity of the long-vanished people are unknown. But the archaeological findings indicate that it was a peer of the Indus Valley cultures of great Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations.

Why did the culture vanish? New evidence suggests that certain geological activity caused upswellings of mud and silt and sand – the notable and promising Harappan civilization drowned in mud.

Will our culture be submerged and perish in the hostilities of person to person, group to group – the mud of neglect, the mud of anger, the mud of slander, the mud of inertia?