Reason In A World Of Chaos

September 7, 1986
Location Unspecified (Probably Lakeland)

In speaking of reason in a world of chaos, my main point is that unless reason is applied to chaotic social, political, [and] economic conditions, confusion will increase and dangers will multiply.

First: definitions.

By reason I mean the capacity to form clear ideas and come to a conclusion. Reason is examining the cause that makes a fact intelligible.

Theoretical reason is the attempt to grasp the universal from a set of particulars.

Reason is the attempt to distinguish the true from the false by examining and comparing different claims.

Reason is a recognition that facts are stubborn obstacles in the way of grandiose claims or bubble-headed ideas.

There is also intuitive reason where, inwardly a person has an intuition that some idea is true or false, and builds logical arguments on the basis of that intuition or an a-priori principle. For example, if I have the inner feeling that there is a God who cares about persons, I can construct logical arguments to support that premise. But also if I have intuition that such a personal God does not exist and never existed, then similarly reason can supply arguments to logically defend that premise.

Chaos is based in old Greek mythology, where chaos was the prior condition to the forming of the cosmos, a void and formless infinite, undefined and undefinable. I do not speak of such pre-cosmic chaos today.

Rather, I am using chaos to describe the conditions among the people of this planet where contradictions exist, where no universal laws apply, and confusion muddles our thinking.

Not all our world is chaotic, obviously. Order prevails in much of our experiences. Here in this country, at least, we can reasonably expect our salaries or Social Security checks. [We] obey the red, green, and amber of traffic lights. Our shopping malls are well-stocked. Our homes will be there when we leave here. But we do face chaos in many aspects of our lives. If I had been preparing an academic paper, a more correct title would have been “Some Elements of Chaos and the Effect that Logical Thinking Might Have to Reduce Chaos and Promote a More Reasonable Order.” But such a title would have turned me off, let alone all of you.

But there are chaotic events and disorders that shock our reasonable minds. A post-office employee went berserk in Edmond, Oklahoma, and killed fifteen people. [CJW note: but there is a murder every few days in Polk County. If we have reasonable minds, should this not be shocking too?] Two airplanes collided near Los Angeles a few days ago and at least 91 people perished violently. Investigations proceed, air safety regulations are being examined in the hope that more reasonable and effective air safety may be a consequence of the disaster. [CJW note: terrorists attack an airplane in Karachi and a synagogue in Istanbul. We are angered and shocked by such chaotic, violent, and tragic deaths.]

Is it not reasonable also that 50,000 highway casualties annually on our highways represent chaos [and] disorder, also? There are many examples.

This week we voted in primary elections. The grandiloquent claims of candidates who, in their statements on TV commercials where they applaud themselves and vilify their opponents, certainly seem chaotic to me. I couldn’t help being reminded of the story in a past election in the state of Maine where two candidates seeking nomination for governor arrived at the gates of the Bath Iron Works to greet shipyard workers as they came through the gates. The rain was pouring down, but the candidates remained there, shaking hands, leafleting and getting soaking wet. They hoped to impress the workers with their persistence. But one shipyard worker walked past them shaking his head, “I wouldn’t vote for anybody who doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.” (READER’S DIGEST)

Our politics are chaotic, or at least disorderly. But that’s been our American history. Among the famous campaign slogans of American past was “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” William Henry Harrison was Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in Cincinnati, [and] had been an unsuccessful business man. In 1811, he had led 1,000 troops against Indians defending their lands at the Battle of Tippecanoe Creek. 188 of Harrison’s troops were killed in an inconclusive victory. Inconclusive, because after Harrison’s troops went home the Indians re-occupied their lands. Nevertheless, Harrison became the hero of Tippecanoe. (Agar, PRICE OF UNION, pp. 278, 80)

In 1836, seeking a candidate to oppose Van Buren and Webster, some politicians seized on the “hero” of Tippecanoe. After nomination of Harrison, Nicholas Biddle, the powerful Philadelphia financier, wrote a set of instructions:

“Let him not say a single word about his principles or his creed – let him say nothing – promise nothing. Let no committee, no convention, no town meeting ever extract from him a single word about what he thinks now, or what he will do hereafter. Let the use of pen and ink be wholly forbidden, as if he were a mad poet in Bedlam.”

Harrison faithfully followed these instructions, Martin Van Buren was elected, but Harrison carried several states. But as the historian (Agar) put it, “it was plenty to set the politicians thinking of the value of a candidate who was so little known that nobody disliked him and so ambiguous that nobody could attack him with clarity.”

So, Harrison was nominated again in 1840, with the same instructions: say nothing, write nothing. He was elected President of the United States. On a cold March day he was inaugurated. Finally give free speech, he delivered a florid, two-hour outdoor oration, caught pneumonia, and died thirty days later. Ex-President Andrew Jackson’s comment was not generous, but may have been accurate: “A kind and overruling Providence has interfered to prolong our glorious Union.”

This illustrates the obstacles that reason confronts when facing if not chaos, then at least the irrational in our world. In our present-day campaigns, when I become irritated or saddened at political methods, I am somewhat comforted by Churchill’s comment that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I do not need to ring the changes on the chaos facing our human scene as nuclear weapons escalate, as toxic and nuclear wastes accumulate, as populations in Asia, Africa, and Central America multiply beyond known ways of feeding and care.

The Hebrew scripture of Joel tells how that prophet described the wrath of God and the end of all things using the metaphor of a devouring horde of locusts: “Fire devours them and behind them a flame burns. The land is like a Garden of Eden before them, but after them a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them.”

Can reason prevail enough to avert the perils of so many possibilities that could ruin or wipe out our human enterprise and all its hopes? I have been singing the blues to you as I frequently sing them to myself. Why share with you again the clouds of chaos appearing on our horizon?

The patterns of our living on this planet do contain pain and defeat. The human venture has muddled through even though disasters have hurt every generation. In Amy Lowell’s sensitive poem, the lady in brocade has just learned that her lover has been killed at Waterloo and cries, “Christ! What are patterns for?” But patterns change as the kaleidoscope of human events turns and turns. Patterns embody hope as well as despair.

What chance for a reasonable world? What hope? We humans on the planet may not meet the test. But one thing seemed true for wise persons in all times. We cannot control much of what we will experience in the years of our lives. But we are free to choose our attitude toward those experiences.

In my files I found a yellowed clipping from a review of a “Guide to Europe” which made this comment: “Much has been written about Pisa’s famous leaning tower, but the visitor need be concerned only with four time-tested approaches to it.

A) You can measure its angle.
B) You can try to push it up.
C) You can try to pull it over.
D) You can adapt yourself to it. There is an old saying – when in Pisa, do as the Pisans do – lean with it.

This guide book clipping is a metaphor in this matter of reason against chaos, logic opposed to irrationality. It is reported that the tower of Pisa is leaning more and more – is it a half-inch per year?

Of course, the most effortless way is to lean with it. It’s much easier to lean with the times, because there’s discomfort in challenging the powers. Many times there’s a personal cost in advocating peace-ways when our war-ways are popular ways. Ambrose Bierce, in his satirical “Devil’s Dictionary,” had a different definition of reason, defining it as weighing probabilities in the scale of desire. In other words, you can always make a reasonable case for what will give you ease or gain, rather than toil and trouble, even though the latter may be more realistic in a dangerous world. [CJW note: “One of the difficulties of humanity is that it has human nature.”]

Then, too, pursuing the Pisa metaphor – leaning with it – will leave one in the ruins with it when it finally crashes.

Another option is to pull the tower over. That is the way of violent revolution. The historical problem is that most violent revolutions not only fail to solve the ills that ignited revolution, but also bring new terrors, pain, and repression.

The third choice is to measure the angle. Take seriously the changes. In other words, know what is happening. In the deluge of words in this Age of Information, what’s true, what is not, and what is irrelevant. How can we protest if we do not know what is wrong? There are many ways to know more about important issues. Many of you are involved in measuring angles on important issues. The need will never end for the public to be informed. I was struck by something Winston Churchill (no radical he) once said about the British War Office in World War I. Churchill said that the British War Office kept three sets of figures: one to mislead the public, another to mislead the cabinet, and a third to mislead itself (Manchester, THE LAST LION, p. 613). My surmise is that such a trinity of deceit has characterized many governments, including our own (and a particular example is Central America). So, continuously check the angle, remembering that Jefferson never said anything more true than “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” One could put it another way, if you don’t pay the price, you won’t have the liberty, or have it very long.

This can be combined with the fourth option in our metaphor of the Leaning Tower. One can prop it up by never tiring of making your views known. Of course, you may be called “liberal,” which is a very bad word today in Florida, according to much campaign nonsense. The real question is not whether a conviction is liberal or conservative, but whether it is closer to truth and reason than it is to falsehood and irrationality.

Easy? Of course not. Discouraging? Yes, when many persons you meet either want to lean with it or tear it down. Not to speak of the temptation we all face to lean with it, because it is less disturbing.

I came across what was to me an inspiring item in AMERICAN HISTORY. In 1828 (sic), there came into being in New York a minority party, the Workingmen’s Party. They were radical men – they stood for such things as free education and abolition of imprisonment for debt. Then, as now, in our system, a minority party has little chance. So the Work Party allied itself with the Jackson Democrats, and were labeled the Locofocos.... I think it is the origin of the slang word, “loco,” i.e., not playing with a full deck.

The Work Party attended a Democratic Party caucus, Tammany Hall, to protest the choice of national candidates and promote their issues. The Tammany Hall bosses had a way of quieting dissent. They would just turn out the gas lights.

But this time the Work Party were prepared. They had brought candles and the then-new friction matches which were called loco-focos. They lit their candles, and the meeting continued. From then on, the Work Party was called the Locofocos. An amusing name, but its real story is one of determination and preparation, two of the prime qualities needed if more reason and less chaos is to prevail in our years and the years to come.

Necessities Of Religious Witness

June 1, 1986
Lakeland

Did you ever stop to think what would happen if people took religions seriously and witnessed to their religion? Helen Woodson’s letter from prison is a prime example of a woman who took her religion seriously, witnessed to it, and was sentenced to prison for eighteen years. Although I am not a Christian, Helen Woodson’s witness is an example, a discipline, and a model of religious witness.

If we unloose our imagination for the moment: in this country, there are more than one hundred million persons who are members of some religious organization or who profess some variety of religious allegiance. Admitting that there are vast differences of belief, practice, and tradition in these hundreds of religious groups, would things be different if all of these millions of persons decided moral questions and social issues by the ethics of the religion they affirm?

Would the affairs of business be conducted exactly as they are now if there was honest acceptance of the Golden Rule as the standard for the exchange of goods and services?

Would our system of criminal codes and punishments be unchanged if all the persons who say they are Christians were to insist that the words of Jesus meant exactly what he said, “Judge not that ye be not judged.”

Would there be any difference in the way disagreements are resolved between nations if all persons who trace their religious heritage back to the Hebrews of ancient Palestine, that is, Jews, Moslems, and Christians of all varieties, were to obey, without qualification, the ancient commandment that most persons would SAY is sacred, “Thou shalt not kill?”

Would there still be a serious deficiency of dedication to education by boards, governments, citizens creating the serious shortage of competent teachers to lead our children if all were to take seriously the sayings of Jesus, “Let the little children come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven,” or, “Woe unto him who would hurt one of these little ones, it were better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and be dropped into the sea?”

Would it still be a crime to jackhammer a missile silo, or would it be a crime to build a nuclear silo?

Add your own examples.

The question of what could be, or what might have been, if people took religion seriously, is one of those “if” questions which will not be answered soon, if the past is any guide to the future. Progress is so faltering that ages pass before we are able to measure the forward strides of the human family.

There is a parallel question: suppose each of us proposed the following to himself or herself: “What would my life be like if I took religion seriously and witnessed to it? What would I do, or try to do, if at this point in my life I should decide firmly, and with no turning back, ‘This is my religion and I’m going to live up to it, regardless of whether it makes me popular or unpopular – whether I survive or perish.’ What would our lives be like? What would our attitudes be toward others? We know from her letter from prison what Helen Woodson’s life was like, and we know her attitude toward herself and others.

If Unitarian Universalism has any truth, it must be relevant to this twentieth, soon to be twenty-first century world, [and] these ideas might be suggested if we were to take this religion seriously.

First, we would try to understand religion – consider what religion has meant in the known history of the human family. In our understanding, we would have to become sensitive to areas of human need, which religions have served:

We would recognize the priestly element in all religions. The priest is generally believed to be a channel of communication between a person and God, or the gods. In most ancient religions, as well as in the largest religions today, the priest is a man ordained and set apart. In Protestantism, each person is his or her own priest; there is a “priesthood of all believers.” The priestly tasks run the gamut of religious practice, beginning with, maybe, witchcraft or shamanism at one end of the scale, and at the other, the vision of one person assisting another to get right with his/her God. But, I believe, deeper than that, priestly service is when one meets another in personal need, helps in tangible ways to heal. In this sense, Helen Woodson acted in a priestly capacity when she encouraged an illiterate woman to commence school. Helen Woodson was in prison for breaking the law on a painful, pressurizing social issue – she acted on the conviction that nuclear weapons must be disarmed, nuclear weaponry be abandoned as a tool of war and diplomacy. But her love and concern was expressed for others who were in prison for different causes. She served the priestly task of religion serving individuals.

We will not understand religion either as a force in history or a power in our lives unless we recognize that religion has always gathered different groups in fellowship. Whether we consider the ancient Hebrews welded together by the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, with the eventual political/social consequence of liberation from bondage; or whether we think of some of the early Christians defying the most powerful empire and finding strength in common worship; or whether we recall 19th century Americans gathering together on the frontiers, singing, worshiping, and building their social lives around their rude churches – in every instance, religion has fostered a bond that brought a group together and kept it together. Helen Woodson and her fellow inmates are a fellowship – no by-laws, of course, no denomination, no creed, but a religious fellowship. Her letter is witness to that bonding experience. Our worship and programs will [have] little enduring meaning unless we are welded together as a group.

Our efforts will be trivial if we are not able to be bonded together to the end that we will know each other better as men and women, as fellow-learners of religion and life, as fellow parents, grandparents, and friends concerned to lead our children to the experience of a religion that we can teach in honesty and maintain without double-talk.

Then, too, important to our understanding is the recognition of the prophetic role of religion. In our tense, suspicious world, there is nothing that needs greater understanding than the historic prophetic stand of individuals who witnessed publicly to their faith.

Religion in its prophetic role protests and attempts to turn around things as they are. The ethical prophet penetrates through to our individual and group selfishness and charges us to repent, to change. Was Jesus very popular? How many of his multitudes that, we are told, flocked to hear him, stayed with him? Only the disciples were with him in Gethsemane. If the traditions have truth, these scattered in the days of the cross. Amos, in more ancient days, was quickly silenced when he began criticizing swindling merchants and lazy women; John Hus and Servetus were burned to death, the ashes of Wycliffe were scattered on the Thames – the martyrs are many.

We will not understand religion unless we recognize that many of the names we revere and admire were spattered with mud, cruelly treated, and not tolerated in the time in which they lived. Perhaps religious truth has to be forged in the fire of the ignorant or heedless crowd, kindled by unscrupulous tyrants and hardened by prophetic fearlessness. Helen Woodson witnessed to her religion; she will be in jail until 1996. After that, she will always have what we call a “prison record.” That stain and burden she will always carry because she obeyed the inner demand of conscience to witness publicly.

But, at least for Unitarian Universalists, if religion is to be taken seriously enough to witness for it, we must create it for ourselves. Religion is an emotion. Secondhand emotions are never as deep or thrilling as the real thing.

Creating our own religion involves a difficult pilgrimage. The journey is life-long and we will be perplexed by doubts and fears as we try to grasp a religion that answers our need for a secure, buoyant faith. If a banker is wise to ask for credentials before cashing a check for a stranger, then most assuredly we should examine a part of life as important as personal religion.

It has come down to us that Jesus told his followers, “Neither do I tell you by what authority I teach.”

This saying has had several interpretations. But each time I read it, I get the feeling that what Jesus was saying was “Don’t believe me or follow me because you think I’m sent by God; I am not telling you if I possess any authority.” It is as though Jesus was saying, “you develop these convictions for yourself. Then, if they are right and good for you, if they give you the same assurance of the goodness and love of God they give me, then you will be a follower of The Way; you will need no approval from an elder, or even from me to hold fast to the religion you believe.”

If we take religion seriously, we will cherish convictions that not only give a code for moral behavior worthy of the name religion, but also lend zest to our lives, and we will discover that religion can thrill us with profound joy. Think again of Helen Woodson’s letter from prison. Is there not a sense of joy amid the confinement but also opportunities of prison life?

We need to take our religion seriously enough to communicate it – to witness to it.

Dr. Kilpatrick once said, “It can be said unequivocally that the best single measure of an institution’s fitness to serve and to survive – whether the institution be a government, a railroad, the cinema, an art museum, a law, a newspaper, a city slum, ... [and I’m sure he would include the church] is the total educative effect of that institution on the living of human beings.”

That is a test for us, too – what effect is our religion having on others? Can we take it seriously enough to communicate it?

Many of you have read about Brook Farm, the Utopian experiment conducted by some of New England’s leading intellectual figures of more than one hundred and fifty years ago. These high-minded scholars, preachers, and teachers were disgusted by the failure of civilization to measure up to the kind of living that Jesus taught. These persons felt that our competitive, discriminating civilization was a hopeless situation from which to expect religious living and religious attitudes. So Ripley, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Dana, and others set up Brook Farm. All possessions were held in common. Everybody was supposed to do his share of the work and the fruits of the harvest were the property of all. No one was to work for another; no one was to be a slave.

The experiment in communal living failed, as so many failed. Perhaps the idealistic scholars did not become aware that one could not be writing poetry in the library and hoeing potatoes at the same time. But even if the experiment had been more successful for the small group, as Henry Steele Commager pointed out, “while it had brought happiness of a sort to the experimenters ... it advanced society not a whit. It did not solve problems, it ignored them; it did not reform institutions, it evaded them. It was an escape, a retreat, and it left social evils untouched.”

If we take our religion seriously, we will try to witness to it by the lives we lead in this complex, social, political world, not by hiding in some Brook Farm or seven-story mountain.

What is there to witness to today, I can only suggest the words of Andrei Sakharov from his 1975 Nobel Peace Prize address: “We must fight for every individual and every act of injustice and against every violation of human rights....

“We need a flexible, pluralist, tolerant society, which will foster a climate of free inquiry and debate and the open-minded use of all of the successes of all social systems. What is detente? What is rapprochement? We are concerned not with words, but with a willingness to create a better and more decent society, a better world order.”

There are not many who have both the conviction and courage of a Helen Woodson, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King, Nelson & Winnie Mandela. But the old cliché still holds, “If we do not stand for something, we will fall for anything.”

The Enduring Primitive And The Potluck

May 18, 1986
Lakeland

Little did I know when I announced this weird title in the BEACON that a subsequent conversation in another country would provide a launching pad for what I want to say today.

In late April, I visited my son, Bill, in the Dominican Republic. While he was preparing Sunday dinner, I was engaged in conversation with two of the guests who were Dominican. The couple was about my age. He spoke only Spanish; she had a limited facility in English; I speak no Spanish. So, Señora Castro was the one in the middle, translating his Spanish for me; my English for him. I have know way of knowing what may have been lost, added, or unintentionally distorted in that rather awkward translation process. They were both lifelong [Roman Catholics], and knew little about Protestantism generally, having spent most of their lives in Spain and the Dominican Republic.

He noticed pictures on the wall of two of the churches I have served as minister. So it came about that I was answering questions about our Unitarian Universalist religious principles, theology, and practice. If you have ever had difficulty explaining [these] in English to someone who was uninformed about Unitarian Universalism, you may appreciate the increased problem of doing it through a translator.

Then he asked if Unitarian Universalists practice the ritual of Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper. I could not answer “no,” because although most of our Unitarian Universalist congregations do not have this ritual, some do. Some of our more traditional churches observe occasional Communion services, particularly on Maundy Thursday, as a remembrance of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. This observance among Unitarian Universalists is not a sacrament in the Christian sense, but a sense of remembrance for Jesus and others who gave their lives so that others might live more fully. Some of this might have crossed the translation gap because he then asked, “Do YOU have Holy Communion?”

I answered, “No.” But it was on the tip of my tongue to add, “but we have a potluck meal once a month.” This is our fellowship meal, as Jesus’ last supper with his disciples was a fellowship meal.” I didn’t say that, because I’m sure it would have only added confusion to confusion. For these devout Roman Catholics, the Eucharist or Mass for them is central and would not have been comparable. [CJW notes: recognize importance to others – awe & wonder – St. Stephens - ]

Thus evolved my thoughts about the Enduring Primitive and the potluck meal.

Basic religious forms exhibit a remarkable continuity, even though changing style and altered expression create an elusive pattern. We presume to think of ourselves as an advanced civilization, but there are enduring primitives at the core of much modern ritual and custom. If we did not think of ourselves as sophisticated, we would more readily admit the origins of today’s rituals.

Marcea Eliade, distinguished scholar of ancient and modern religions, died a couple weeks ago, greatly mourned in the University of Chicago community, to which he had contributed so much learning. In his book, PATTERNS OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION, Eliade considers the striking consistency at the heart of religious institutions. For example, there are religious ideas which are ancient beyond recorded history and remarkably wide-spread over the face of the earth. Among these ideas which were primitive and still endure, usually in more abstract and less direct form, would be the creating Father in heaven, the earth Mother, the regenerative power of the water, the reverence due sacred places, sacred spaces, and sacred times (especially the recurring year and changing seasons). But today, I would have you think of another enduring primitive – the sacred meal. The purpose of reviewing its historic universality and particular Christian emphasis is to provoke your thought about whether we are missing something vital because we celebrate neither Holy Communion nor the Lord’s Supper.

The sacrificial meal is of such great antiquity that not only the entire human history, but also the prehistoric myths and legends, record its wide celebration.

There was a time when the sacrifice was human and the sacred meal cannibalistic. A human being was chosen to play the role of the god, or the totem animal, was slaughtered and devoured in the crude belief that if one ate of the god, the god’s power and strength would be assimilated. Human sacrifice is a grisly notion; cannibalism is repugnant. Yet these are the roots of modern, dignified rituals of sacrifice. The purpose was not necessarily just gory brutality. The rituals regulated social and religious behavior. If one believed that sacrificing that which is precious was a noble religious act, primitive people were moved to sacrifice the most precious possession, life itself.

In the process of social development, the human sacrifice was gradually abandoned as a religious ceremony for others kinds of ritual meals. On a rock in the wilderness, the legend of Abram’s higher vision and experience of God caused him to refrain from cutting the throat of his son, Isaac. A ram was substituted. For a long period in human social evolution, the helpless animal was the victim of ritual death. There are still lingering cultural reminders of animal sacrifice. Perhaps you read recently of the controversy in Tarpon Springs about the practice of the descendants of Greek culture cutting the throats of lambs for the Easter feast. The bull-fighting arenas in Spain are a spectacular example, although moderns may call it “sport.” The use of a roasted lamb bone in the Passover ritual or the description of Jesus as the “Paschal lamb” or the “lamb of God” are culturally refined remnants of animal sacrifice.

The sacred meal of corn and wine was a further refinement. Four thousand years ago, the Hittites lived in the Fertile Crescent we now know as Turkey or Anatolia, a land which has been called the “Loom of History” by scholar Herbert Muller. The Hittites were not only pastoral and agricultural people, but they were also able to mine, smelt, and fashion the iron ore of the Taurus foothills. On the cliffs they chiseled out some remarkable carvings. One frieze depicts a man holding grapes and grain, symbols of the fertility of the land from which comes sustenance for human survival.

Wine and corn or grain have been widespread elements of ritual meals. Frazier, in his classic THE GOLDEN BOUGH, devoted pages to describing the variety of ways both ancient folk and primitive peoples today celebrated their deep religious impulses and ceremonial initiations with bread and wine.

The Christian Communion rituals have been identified with both the good earth and the sacrifice of a god. The names by which it has been known indicate the blending of two ancient ritual practices – “the Lord’s Supper,” “the breaking of the bread,” “Holy Communion,” “the sacrifice of the Mass,” and so on.

When Jesus and his disciples shared the meal, later called the Last Supper, they may have been celebrating Seder, the Jewish Passover, although John’s gospel might indicate that the event occurred a day prior to Passover. The earliest account we have is Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (11 23/25) where Paul writes, “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took some bread and gave thanks for it, and then broke it in pieces saying, ‘this is my body which takes your place, do so in memory of me.’ He then took the cup too, after supper in the same way, saying, ‘This is the cup of the new agreement ratified by my blood. Whenever you drink it, do so in memory of me.’” Paul does not mention the Passover; he refers only to the night Jesus was betrayed.

Since the discovery and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are some scholars who believe that the Last Supper may have been a fraternal feast of the Essene Brotherhood. The Essenes, living at Qumran, celebrated the Sabbath eve with a meal which was a ritual anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. If Jesus was a member, or had been, of the Essene community, such a solemn feast would have represented their united hope for the arrival of the Messiah.

It is just as probable that those disciples and their rabbi/teacher were observing their usual custom, eating together. The German church historian, Lietzmann, commented that the Hebrew word, “Habura,” which might have meant “comrade” in ancient times, also signified the small group associated with a rabbi. What they ate was limited to what they had been able to gather. Bread and wine were difficult for poor wanderers to acquire. When they came by it, they shared. Lietzmann suggests further that, as the disciples dipped into the common bowl, Jesus might have said, “In this kind of sharing, I belong always.”

Are we missing something vital because we do not celebrate this enduring, primitive ceremony? The reality that we are in this fellowship is an indication that for us, the “miracle” of the Roman Catholic Mass stirs no response of truth or wonder in us. For most of us, the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ to satisfy a just and angry god for the sins of the living and the dead provides little emotional satisfaction and less ethical validity. The mainstream of orthodox Protestant practice has refined to the Latin magic, but still places reliance on a supernatural savior for salvation.

It is not only the revolt from orthodoxy which leads Unitarian Universalists and some other groups, such as the Friends, to disavow the Communion service. The symbols of bread and wine had deep meaning in agricultural civilizations where the growth of grain and vine were necessary to human survival. But now, when most of us live in metropolitan areas, we get our bread not only baked, but sliced and packaged by machinery, not to speak of being fortified by vitamins. We move greater distances from the basic soil. If a symbolic service is to have meaning for men and women who can’t conscientiously participate in the Mass or Holy Communion, then, perhaps, different symbols must evolve to remind us of essentials in living.

There are deeply-rooted vibrations in the symbols of life and death. We make no ritual of it in any usual sense, but our potluck meal, such as the one which follows this service, is a visible celebration. But to me, there are times when I feel it is also a symbolic act. If I may indulge in fantasy, if after I die, I could be permitted to return to Earth on a limited number of occasions, one choice would be the third Sunday. Remember Lietzmann’s point about Jesus’ meal with his disciples, “In this kind of sharing I belong always.”

The potluck is sharing food, fun, and nourishment. And, if you think about it, we also share memories. How often we remember Tommy, Edna, Roy, Archie, and others. Newcomers will join the table of the fellowship, others will drop out, but symbolically will be with us in shared memories. But too, unsaid, there is celebration of sacrifice.

The grain is milled for our bread; the lamb is slaughtered for our food; the coffee and orange are crushed for our thirst. We call bread “the staff of life.” Should we not ponder life’s strangest mystery and most curious enigma – that we live because of the involuntary sacrifice of the grain of wheat, the fruit of the vine, the beasts of the field and the birds of the air? At the end, our bodies are to mingle again among the elements which have sustained us.

When Albert Schweitzer affirmed “reverence for life,” he was speaking of life in this inclusive sense. Every form of life, whether the inanimate rock, the organic tree, the sensate animal, or the knowing human, exists at the expense of other life. Reverence for life bows before all the myriad forms of existence which exists because, and for, other forms. We are linked to all that lives and to all the inorganic creations in our universe. Without this vast, living network, there would be no place for us in the astonishing and mysterious scheme of things.

In still more intimate linkage, we live because other persons have given themselves voluntarily that we may have life, and have it more abundantly. The parent who abdicates luxury and security for the sake of his/her child, the volunteer who gives her/his life for a cause in which she/he believes, the physician, the nurse, the prophet – all the servants of the human venture who sustain us because they make life possible.

Because symbols evolve, and cannot be contrived, we may need to seek and recognize non-verbal ways of touching the deep wells of our inner existence. We cannot contrive to believe the Mass or Holy Communion if we do not share in the profound meanings others seem to find.

Meanwhile, if you will consider the sharing of good food in the potluck as “tokens of participation” in which we experience through sight, feeling, taste, and nourishment ... not only ... joy and fellowship, but also memory, perhaps some of the grandeur and mystery of living will be felt, even if not expressed. If in our community of memory and hope we feel something of the triumph and tragedy that is an inescapable part of being human, we may become more aware that “in this kind of sharing, we belong always.”

John Ciardi – 1916-1986

May 4, 1986
Lakeland

[Editor’s note: the following biographical sermon was apparently delivered with a number of books of poetry at hand; the poems themselves are referenced here, but as they are likely still under copyright, they cannot be reproduced here.]

When I read of the death of John Ciardi, a month ago, I thought of the time when this American poet spoke to a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Plainfield, New Jersey. I was deeply impressed with his wit, witness, and wisdom, his exuberant and warm personality. Following that service, he joined a group of us for lunch and drinks at a member’s home. He didn’t eat and run, but stayed for hours. The wine and whiskey flowed; jokes and serious talk cast a magic spell over the occasion.

John Ciardi was a poet, teacher, critic. Many of you I’m sure heard his weekly program on National Public Radio, “Word in Your Ear” - his resonant voice showing his love of words and their origins. Today, in sharing samples from his poetry, I’m conscious of how John Ciardi was an American speaking to us.

His words and thoughts are seldom sugared soap-opera lines; he loved living, but also knew life’s contradictions and cruelties as well as hope and happiness. Many would find him quite cynical, but his cynicism, laced with humor, was a product of wide-open eyes and a searching mind that had no patience with sham and pomposity.

John Ciardi was born in Boston, the son of Italian immigrants. In 1921, his father was killed in an auto accident. After college – Bates, Tufts, and the University of Michigan – he taught at Kansas State, Harvard, and Rutgers. For 16 years he was poetry editor of the Saturday Review.

In 1942 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was a gunner aboard a B-29 in the aerial offensive against Japan. He was decorated with the Air Medal and the Oak-Leaf Cluster. Out of that ... experience, he wrote several poems which tell us more about the war than most statistics:

An Alphabestiary - “B is for Bomber
In Fact – p. 5 - “My Tribe”
Strangest Everything – p. 56 – The Formalities

It comes through clearly both in his poetry and my recollection that he had little patience with sham and pomposity. In his poem, “an elegy for the American school system” his poetic scalpel is sharp, as he has fun with some of the jargon of the social sciences and language fog [CJW note: disdain for some of the language forms which erupted in the 60s – encounter and confrontation; the language of learned dissertations at teacher’s colleges....]

For Instance – p. 68

Ciardi was much in demand as a traveling lecturer. This both increased his income and increased his ability to look at himself with humor, and at the world with thanks.

The Strangest Everything – p. 9 (60s)

Like many of us, he was sometimes skeptical of politicians and VIPs:

Alphabestiary - “G”
In Fact - “Oration” - p. 33
“Waive” - not wave

He was a seeker of meanings beyond the orthodoxies or liberalisms of his day.

Strangest Everything p. 43 – A ballad of teleologies -
67 Project for a cliff face
“In Fact” - 49 – In My Father’s ...
For Instance – 60 – Roman Diary

Ciardi wrote many lines to love – love of parent for child, love of child for parent – love of man and woman. Of the latter, Ciardi once wrote, “Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.” (CONTEXT)

Ciardi loved children [and] was a parent. His poems for children are noteworthy.

For Instance – 44 – For John L
Strangest Everything – 28 - “Buy”
Woman – p. 57 – In Fact
“Strange wooing words....”

Ciardi’s eroticism and sensuality didn’t need 4-letter words.

Ciardi’s words and thoughts about religion walk strange and lonely paths.

Alphabestiary - “R” is for rat
The Strangest Everything – notes on Psalmist, p. 59
Daemons – p. 11

So John Ciardi, sleep well.

Kenneth Rexroth, a fellow-poet, said of Ciardi: “He is singularly unlike most American poets with their narrow lives and feuds. He is more like a very literate, gently appetitive, Italo-American airplane pilot, fond of deep, simple things, like his wife and kids, his friends, his students, Dante’s verse and good food and wine.”

So for those moments
When you’d like to meditate
On the poetic imagination
Of a man who loved life,
And loved it without rose-colored
Glasses, I recommend John Ciardi

(Lover’s quarrel with the world)
He is one

The theologians
gather dust upon the shelves
of my library, but the poets
are stained with my fingers
and blotted with my tears
I never seem, etc.

The Janus Weakness

April 20, 1986
Lakeland

You may consider this a peculiar time of year to be stimulated by the myth of the Roman god, Janus. Janus is shown on the old Roman coins with a double profile, facing opposite ways. Janus is a favorite starter for New Year’s sermons – look back on the old, look forward to the new. I am not so confused to think that it is January when it is April. After all, the Romans honored Janus not only on the first day of the New Year, but on the first day of each month. This is neither the first day of the year, nor the first day of the month. Nevertheless, Janus and what I term the “Janus weakness” is my subject today. By the “Janus weakness” I contend that looking backward with anger, regret, or satisfaction and looking forward with anticipation, dread, or hope are not enough. Such thoughts and emotions are both natural and inevitable, but the present time, the present moment is where [we] live, feel, and have our being.

When I speak of time, I am not referring to the time concepts of advanced physicists and their quanta theories, where time is not an absolute sequence, but [instead one that has] dimensions [of ] ... space and the behavior of microscopic particles charged with electricity, [and which exhibits] behavior that is affected both by the scientific observer and by what the scientist seeks to observe. Quanta theories will always be a mystery to me. Long before the 20th century physicists, essayist Charles Lamb wrote, “Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.” To a considerable degree, I share Lamb’s feeling about time and space in quanta theories.

Time, for me, is my experience of a particular coming into being every moment, replacing the previous moment, and instantly replaced by a successor movement of time. [CJW note: digital watch – emphasizes when the seconds change] Not mathematical time, but the human sequential time, we name the past, the present, and the future.

There is an acknowledgment I make to you. In books telling preachers how to preach, there is mentioned the “confessional sermon” where the preacher shares with the congregation “where he’s at” in our ungrammatical, but seemingly acceptable, English. What I am sharing is the product of pessimistic moods as well as what I might call a saving grace, which for me helps turn the “Janus weakness” into strength. That saving grace was poetically disclosed in Walt Whitman’s “Miracles.”

Somewhere I picked up the story of a “shipwrecked sailor who had spent three years on a desert island, who was overjoyed to see a ship drop anchor. A small boat came ashore and an officer handed the sailor a bunch of newspapers. ‘The captain suggests that you read what’s going on in the world, and then let us know if you want to be rescued.’”

I resonate with that. The newspapers and the TV and radio media are overwhelming us with sad and doleful news. Just a couple of days ago, a 17-year-old student committed suicide on a closed circuit TV show at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. At the conclusion of a program of protest against college policies, Andrew Hermann declared, “Now I’m going to join my brothers and drink cyanide-impregnated Kool-Aid.” He did, and he died.

The media have uses most air and print space on the U.S. attack of Libya, designed to make the Libyans stop terrorist acts, although the effect seems to be that terrorist acts are increasing and will continue. [CJW note: With so many persons canceling overseas plans, it seems that we are becoming captives in our own country, although we are the most powerful nation on earth.] There is less hope under present conditions and tensions that nuclear escalation can be halted or limited, let alone reduced. The Central America story and the U.S. part in it is both foolish and dangerous, but the “March of Folly” continues.

Sometimes in my dark moods I think that this world is inhabited by unsupervised children whose toys are dynamite cars, matches, toxic poisons, and venomous snakes. The Tinker Toys are buttons which will explode nuclear bombs, heat-seeking missiles, and other playthings for disaster.

Thus the temptation, some have, who love history and biography, to look steadily backward like Janus – look at the past with nostalgia, amusement, reverence, anger, or to understand. That can be a pre-occupation that enables a forgetting, a neglect of (escape from?) the present.

The most avid learner of the past is lost if he stays there. Edward Arlington Robinson seized that reality with the poet’s grasp. Recall two of the several stanzas:

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
he dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors....

Miniver Cheevy, born too late.
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate
And kept on drinking.

There are some of us, at least I’m one, who have had to wrestle with the inner demons that conquered Miniver Cheevy. Edward Arlington Robinson had a poet’s understanding of disillusioned men, not only Miniver Cheevy, but Richard Cory and Bewick Finzer.

The Janus look backward is a necessity to understand the vices of power, greed, weakness, and the strength, goodness, and sharing that are also the human heritage. Our Jacobs may wrestle not with angels, but an addiction, and many win. Our Samsons may not be massively muscled enough to pull down a temple with brute strength, but may have unsteady fingers on buttons that can launch nuclear missiles. Delilah may wear a Paris gown, and Judas is a cocaine dealer. The hungry do not find manna, god-given in the wilderness, but some at least are fed by nations and peoples who are not unhappy to dispose of surplus grain and corn.

The old Romans ascribed to Janus a role in the creation of the world and the promoter of human initiative. The look backward is not a closed retreat, but a way of understanding.

Janus looked forward, too. His insignia was the key which opens and closes the door. The key to the future involves foresight, planning, hope and persistence. Goals, aims, ideals are necessities to us conscious beings. Life’s line is what went before and stretches to the future.

The Tragedy of life

It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled. It is a calamity not to dream.
It is not a disaster to not be able to capture your ideal. It is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.
It is not a disgrace to not reach the stars. It is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.
Not failure, but low aim, is sin.

Dr. Benjamin E. Hooks.
Published in Community News

Of course, we must look to the future in our fellowship, with our dreams of a larger house for greater congregation. In our individual lives, we look to the future and plan for our children, our homes, our medical well-being, our financial security, our preparations to become better professionals, better carpenters, better computer experts, [and] seek more rewarding careers. Who can live without hope? But dreams of the future and neglect of the practicality of the present is the other side of the Miniver Cheevy coin.

At times we sing to the hymn tune, “Truro” - I have not chosen for some time; early in my ministry, I wore it out.

THESE THINGS SHALL BE
Tune: Truro

These things shall be, -- a loftier race
Than e’er the world hath known shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of knowledge in their eyes.

They shall be gentle, brave, and strong
To spill no drop of blood, but dare
All that may plant man’s lordship firm
On earth, and fire, and sea, and air.

They shall be simple in their homes,
And splendid in their public ways,
Filling the mansions of the state
With music and with hymns of praise.

Nation with nation, land with land,
Unarmed shall live as comrades free;
In every heart and brain shall throb
The pulse of one fraternity.

New arts shall bloom of the loftier mould,
And mightier music thrill the skies,
And every life shall be a song
When all the earth is paradise.

Beautiful idealism, genuine world-wide human concern, a world of peace with nations unarmed, and all the earth [a] paradise.

But many today would scoff at these words written by John Addington Symonds in 1880 – a time when progress onward and upward seemed a fair prediction of things to come. Empty-headed, vaporous dreaming, ignorance of the vices of power and greed, would be the way many would view those words today, because omitted is how we can get to that earthly paradise. There is an unerasable “given” in today’s world of contentious conflict and national rivalries. It will be a long, painful, difficult, [and] frustrating task to begin to achieve even a measure of such a wonderful world.

The Janus weakness is that there is no profile pointed at the present moment. That is where we are on life’s line. Memories are pleasure and pain, the future is laced with hope and fear, but the present is where we are and always will be. Do we treasure the moment enough? With all our hang-ups, difficulty and pain, do we value this day, this hour, this moment? Another quaint story I came across goes like this:

A lady who was an incurable grumbler complained about everything and everybody. But, alas, the minister thought he had found something which she could make no complaint. The old lady’s crop of potatoes was certainly the finest for miles around. “Ah, for once you must be pleased,” he said with a beaming smile as he met her in the village street. “Everyone is saying how splendid your potatoes are this year.” The old lady glared at him as she answered, “They are not so bad, but where are the rotten ones for the pigs?”

I have met persons like that grumbling old lady. More than that, I have grumbled when there was more cause to rejoice in the world and be glad in it. Perhaps, some of you, too, will find the coat fits at times. The Janus weakness is to embrace insufficiently the present moment, even when there is bad news as well as good news.

We have survived to this hour. If granted more present days, we may have to revise our opinions from time to time on what is good, true, and beautiful. We Unitarian Universalists have as one of our principles, “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” The search is in the never-ending NOW. The search will disclose necessary revisions. Quite appealing to me is an inscription that a geologist writing in the New Yorker (3/3/86) found over a doorway in a German Officer’s school. Rendered in English, the axiom is “Say not ‘This is the truth’ but ‘so it seems to me to be as I now see things I think I see.’” Such to me is wisdom.

Such to me is the world and the beloved persons that when I am both wise and aware I encounter in the never-ending now. Did you see “The Family Circus” cartoon a couple weeks ago? Billy, at the window, says, “I see trees and grass and birds and clouds and sky...” Dolly replies, “I see smears and fingerprints and flyspecks and dust...” Billy retorts, “Windows are for lookin’ THROUGH, Dolly, not AT!”

We are not in Paradise – no one ever was – but we can help overcome the Janus weakness of insufficient appreciation of the now when we see through the smears, fingerprints, flyspecks, and dust to the lovelier scene beyond.

The Romans believed Janus had another power – his two faces allowed him to observe both the interior and exterior of the house: symbolically perhaps, our inner feelings and exterior world. It is wisdom to recognize that the smears, fingerprints, flyspecks, and dust of our own fears and follies may blur the vista of wonders beyond ourselves. The present is a gift to be cherished beyond memories and future promises. My conclusion and summary is that scripture from the Sanskrit found in our blue hymn book – that scripture for me is the saving grace when downcast by the follies and fears in our human enterprise.

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course, be all the verities
and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well-lived, makes every
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

Filters Against Folly

April 6, 1986
Lakeland

One definition of immaturity is to prefer immediate gratification and ignore longer-range goals and goods. FILTERS AGAINST FOLLY was written by Garrett Hardin in 1985. Garrett Hardin is Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at University of California – Santa Barbara. The sub-title of FILTERS AGAINST FOLLY is “How to Survive despite Economists, Ecologists, and the Merely Eloquent.”

Some of you may remember the difficult choices Garrett Hardin offers, when a couple of years ago in Wednesday night discussion group we talked about the “Tragedy of the Commons” and the “Lifeboat Ethic.” Hardin’s rigorous thinking cuts at the core of some of our idealistic generalities. Because in a brief time today I can only touch base with the range of Hardin’s arguments, Wednesday nights April 16, 23, and 30, the conditions will be more fully explored.

Hardin notes that we have been experiencing an ecological revolution, but it has at times “attracted more enthusiasm than understanding.” He asks, “How are we laymen to survive in a world increasingly dominated by experts?” He also reminds us that as “everybody is a layman in some areas, let us accept the term proudly and see what measures we can take to extract some truth from the depositions of experts.” (p. 11) He emphasizes the “greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically.”

What is the “environment,” that word so frequently used? In the author’s view, “environment” refers to two sorts of relationships: “First, there are the relations of human beings to the non-human world, a world that makes no allowances for human desires. The discipline of ecology studies these relationships. Second, there is the internal environment in which human beings are the environment for other human beings. This world is the object of study [in] economics, political science, and ethics. The combined study of both kinds of relationships is the province of human ecology.” (p. 12)

What is folly? Foolish actions. Barbara Tuchman, in THE MARCH OF FOLLY, wrote of the invariable wooden-headedness of those headed for tragedy. “We want prophylactics against folly.” (p. 15) It is Hardin’s contention that “many of our mistakes can be both understood and avoided if we are acutely aware of three intellectual filters available to us in our dealings with reality.”

The three filters against folly he proposes are: the literate filter, the numerate filter, and the ecolate filter.

Literate – what are the words?
Numerate – what are the numbers?
Ecolate – and then, what?

First, the literate filter - “the principle function of language is to promote communication between people and that it serves to further than interior communication we call thinking.” (p. 27) Hardin points out, however, that there is a greater truth: “Beyond communication, language has two functions: to promote thought and to prevent it.” (p. 28) He quotes Oliver Goldsmith, “The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.” Hardin cites an instance how certain promoters can thwart the law through language. In New York City, calling a certain kind of business a “massage parlor” invites trouble with the laws against prostitution. One ingenious owner of such a parlor in Manhattan’s Times Square named his facility, “Fellowship for Human Happiness”, incorporating as a religious corporation. But in order to inform potential male customers of the real nature of the business, leaflets were handed out to men on the street with the inviting message “to be captivated by your own personal, glamorous, tranquility angel in the seclusion of our temple.” It took two years for the law to catch up.

On a more serious level, Hardin points out how literacy or words can speak folly. He cites three brief examples (pp. 30-31):

“In 1909 the U. S. Bureau of Soils issued this statement: ‘The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used up.’”

The he quotes a recent opponent of abortion: “Moral law spells out the sanctity of life in very specific terms, attributing infinite value to every innocent human life. Infinity is indivisible. Any fraction of infinity remains equally infinite.”

Third, in 1967, the Secretary of Defense testifying before a Senate committee was asked, “how long can the U.S. Afford the gigantic financial cost of the major ground war in Southeast Asia?” The Secretary of Defense replied, “I think, forever.”

Infinity and forever are the common speech elements in those three statements. The term “infinity” may have a certain usefulness to mathematicians, but is neither informative nor helpful in the examples given. Operational answers in these cases have been paraphrased:

Agriculture bureaucrat - “It is ridiculous to suppose that the soil could ever be exhausted. I refuse to talk about it.” (p. 31)

Abortion opponent - “I am not interested in assertions that abortion may sometimes be the lesser of two evils. I refuse to talk about it.”

Secretary of Defense - “Don’t bother to try to figure out the domestic consequences of continuing to pursue the war in Vietnam, I refuse to talk about it.”

In terms of the resources of our planet, “infinity” is both irrelevant and misleading. Our world is finite, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” As Hardin put it, “Language is action: it serves the demands of the ego whether it is used to promote or prevent thought.” (p. 34)

Nor are those who stoutly defend conservation exempt from building language traps. The great naturalist John Muir said, “The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest, transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.” (pp. 35-36)

Beautiful statement, right? But operationally, would you think of it the next time you squash a cockroach or swat a mosquito?

Hardin points out that there may be ten millions of species of plants and animals. As one habitat after another developed, 1/3rd of the world’s species will be destroyed by the year 2000. The smallpox virus is one transmicroscopic creature. Is the world incomplete because a few years ago we may have eliminated that virus? (p. 36)

The literate filter against folly has to balance conflicting goals. Rhetoric like John Muir’s may be wonderful, but how operational is it? Hardin remarks, “it is when ecological rhetoric is most beautiful that we must be on our guard.” (p. 37)

His second filter against folly is the numerate. He defines “numeracy” (p. 38):

“1) The act of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning variables in order that practical decisions may be reached. 2) That aspect of education which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.”

Because Hardin’s discussion of numeracy will be clearer on newsprint and in discussion, today only brief observations will be made.

“Where is the dividing line between safe and unsafe speeds for an automobile? What is the safe amount of radiation for a human being? At what level should we start worrying about acid rain? Nature is silent. Nature does not tell us when ‘safe’ steps into ‘unsafe.’ Men and women reasoning together must legally define ‘unsafe.’” [CJW note: 41, 55, or would 52 or 60]

But numbers are used by human beings, and human beings are fallible. “In the mid 1970s a $2 million study, The Rasmussen Study, concluded that the probability of a significant nuclear reactor accident was less than the probability of a person’s being hit by a meteorite. But the Rasmussen report failed to deal with human unreliability.” (p. 51) Then, March 1980, Three Mile Island – we do not know the human cost – that may not be assessed for years. But the cost of repairs, evacuations, emergency measures, etc., were hundreds of millions [of dollars]. When that accident was investigated, the conclusion was “except for human failures, the major accident would have been a minor incident.”

It seems probable to me that the report on the disaster of the orbiter Challenger will come to a similar conclusion.

Human beings are part of the total system, and failure to recognize this constantly will be grave and disastrous neglect indeed. Numbers are not enough.

Then there is what Hardin calls the Ecolate filter. Ecology is a rather recent value, or at least hardly emphasized before the second half of this century. You are aware of the term “side-effect,” which Hardin believes is language to discourage thinking about total effects of a new medicine, pesticide, or a new public works project, when some of the consequences prove embarrassing to the promoters. (p. 53) But to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “an effect is an effect is an effect.”

The disaster effects – not “side effects” - are numerous. Many of you are familiar with the bad effect of the Aswan Dam on the Nile which was built for a good purpose. The question never asked – after the dam is built, then what? (p. 54)

During some of that same period, the Volta River in west Africa was dammed and followed by an enormous increase in the black flies, together with their parasites, which cause outbreaks of river blindness – a dreadful disease. DDT was used, but it killed the insect enemies of the black flies as well, resulting in a worse outbreak of river blindness. And then what?

These and other disasters could be labeled as “progress gone sour.”

Thus the warnings of the ecologists need to be taken seriously. The physical resources of the planet are no greater than when Homo Sapiens first emerged, but there are a great many more people in the world. (p. 57)

In 1963, Hardin proposed a “First Law of Ecology”: “We can never do merely one thing.”

“An important part of the ecolate filtering apparatus is semantic. Many conflicts over environmental matters can be cleared up (more) quickly once the semantics are straightened out:

[CJW note: read p. 67]

The limits of time make it necessary to postpone to our Wednesday night discussion group important observations Hardin makes -

such as vested interests
such as the idea of progress
such as slippery slopes and camel’s noses
such as the human time bind
such as a tragic distribution system
such as compassion and principle
such as Belshazzar’s Feast and the Greenhouse Effect.

[CJW note: GBS quote, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.” ]

[CJW note: the Double C – Double P game]

... why do we say there is a shortage of food, rather than a longage of people?

I believe that filters against folly are the disciplines we will neglect at some cost to ourselves, but at much greater cost to those who come after us. There are tough questions and difficult answers. Actions will be painful because the prospects are that everyone will have to live with less of what we may believe to be necessities, but may prove out to be luxuries. And most of us won’t like that. We are part of a human and natural environment, and everything we do affects the human environment and the natural environment. We are being measured and counted. There is handwriting on the wall. Plain thinkers like Hardin can broaden our perspectives and deepen our sense not only of how beautiful is the Earth, but also how necessary is wise and thoughtful stewardship. It’s not too late.

Loren Eiseley’s physicist put tortoise back because as he said, “I have tampered enough with the universe.” I’m sure he felt that deeply, but the inescapable reality is that we can’t stop tampering with the universe. But we can attempt to use filters against folly so we may use the resources of the planet in a more ways that will sensibly conserve, rather than selfishly waste.

Jacques Cousteau once said, “If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.”

Prophetic Elements In Social Change

March 23, 1986
Lakeland

On this day Christians all over the world observe Palm Sunday, the day on the Christian calendar when throngs greeted Jesus, waving palms and shouting hosannas. To most of those who sing hosannas today, Jesus is the Christ who, after his triumphal entry, will be tried [and] crucified, and then he will rise from the dead, completing the Christian plan of salvation for a sinful humanity which cannot save itself.

This story of supernatural salvation is not part of my beliefs. To me, Jesus is in the line of the great Hebrew prophets who spoke fearlessly about the human condition – what is was and what it could be.

My purpose today is to make the distinction between two kind of prophets; to emphasize the ethical prophet in one compelling example, Amos; and to remind ourselves that prophetic elements have been agents of sweeping social change. Or, to put it more plainly, “a prime factor in human progress is rebellion.”

One variety of prophet is one who predicts the future. There are many who believe ... that the Bible foretells the future, particularly using the strange books of Daniel and Revelation. In all peoples, curiosity about an unknown future has brought to prominence those who claim to know the mysteries of the future: seers, gazers into crystal balls, palm, tea, and card readers, and shamans innumerable. In all times, places, and among all peoples these seers are professed to unveil the mysteries of the future. Such predictors are not my subject today, because most predictors have been wrong in their specifics, and because to be primarily concerned with the future can foster a neglect of the present.

Rather, my emphasis is on the ethical prophet – the forth-teller, not the fore-teller. The ethical prophet who speaks to the “now,” not [one who] guesses about the future. They did not seek to unveil the future, but to fearlessly point out what was wrong in the present. Their enduring value resides in their example. One modern historian referred to the Woody Allen quip about whether you can see the human soul under a microscope: “Maybe, but you’d definitely need one of those good ones with two eyepieces.” The ethical prophets had those two eyepieces as they looked critically at the behavior and attitude of the people of their times.

The power of ethical prophecy is best shown by Amos. In the time of King Jeroboam of Israel, 755/743 BCE, there was prosperity in the land. But it was a prosperity where a few were very rich, but most people were poor and deprived.

Coming down from the hills, Amos, a shepherd, convinced that Yahveh had inspired him to speak to the people, not about a future Utopia where all things would be nice, but about a present made ugly by greed, selfishness, cruelty, and empty ritual. Amos was both poet and critic, gifted with astonishing poetic art for a shepherd-peasant. He was dominated by a vision of justice and righteousness. He not only believed thoroughly in the Covenant of Yahveh with his people, he was also completely convinced that the Covenant was two-way, and that human well-being was the responsibility of humankind.

Israel, the Northern Kingdom of the Ten Tribes, had broken away from Judah following the reign of Solomon (937 BCE). Israel had advantages of resource and space. As Rolland Wolfe (MEET AMOS AND HOSEA, p. xxx) observed, “Israel was no exception to the rule that prosperity is in reality the greatest hardship a nation is called upon to endure. The pomp of Israel and the accompanying luxurious living resulted in spiritual atrophy and moral degeneracy.”

Amos arrived in Samaria and was shocked at what he found in the capital city of Israel. His criticisms were not inoffensive generalities. He was scathingly specific.

He was not gentle with rich women who extravagantly displayed their wealth on festive occasions.

“Listen to these words,
You cows of Bashan,
Who are on Mt. Samaria
Who oppress the poor
Who crush the needy
Who say to your husbands,
Serve and let us drink.”

Well such criticism didn’t go over very well – any more than it would today, at say a gala ball in Palm Beach or Monte Carlo.

I have already read how Amos attacked empty ritualism thereby offending the priestly class.

He castigated the judges and the judicial system:

“They hate him who reproves in the gate,
And abhor those who speak truthfully. ...
Harassers of the righteous, takers of bribes
They even turn aside the needy in the gate.”

He blistered the merchants and business-men:

“Making the measure scant and the price high.
Trading dishonestly with deceitful scales
Begging out the poor for silver
And the needy for a pair of shoes.”

We do not know what happened to Amos. His ethical preaching was silenced – whether because of imprisonment, exile, or execution, we do not know. But his ethical preaching emphasized the prophetic elements in social change. Many of his attitudes have been reflected in some of the radical social changes that have happened in our own nation.

Lincoln Steffens, who exposed much corruption and injustice in his book SHAME OF THE CITIES, and various other courageous writings, remarked in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY, “I was not the original muckracker; the Hebrew prophets were ahead of me.”

This is not to say that the courageous leaders of social change in modern times were all biblically inspired. That would be a study in itself. But prophetic elements included aggressive criticism of specific conditions, methods which were seldom polite, a recognition that in the words of an old proverb, “those who preach patience never knew pain”, and a realization that to quote C. P. Snow, far more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than in the name of rebellion.” (Muller, p. 118)

Consider the women’s suffrage movement. Most of us are familiar, at least slightly, with such heroines of women’s struggle to secure the vote as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others. What we tend to forget is how obnoxious they were considered in their own time. The 19th Amendment in 1920 took decades to achieve. Half of the 19th century and two decades of the 20th were long years of protest, recruitment to the cause, dealing with establishment opposition, ridicule, slander, and apathy. As in these long years of struggle, women could not vote, electoral politics were ineffective, and had to be opposed by dramatic protests which sometimes meant jail and usually meant scorn.

Now, 66 years after, the 19th Amendment, for which courageous women sacrificed so much pursuing the dream of suffrage, is part of the status quo. That women have the right to vote seems unremarkable now.

Consider what we call the labor movement. The struggles of working men and women to organize is a history of courage, sacrifice, imprisonment, and for some, death. Nowadays, we think of organized labor as one of the institutions in our society. Like most enormous institutions, there is some decay at the top. The top labor officers are among the privileged. But it was not always so.

Labor organized because of specific criticisms of existing conditions. The ILGU, one of the stronger and more admirable unions, received much of its impetus when the Triangle Shirt Waist building in New York City burned and hundreds of young women lost their lives because of a lack of safety conditions and exits.

In many cases, strikes and other direct actions were caused in part because so many of the ethnic minorities could not vote. Consequently, any avenue of change through electoral politics was little help. They sensed, and many people still believed, that electoral policies of either of the two major parties is for the most part a bi-ennial or quadrennial legitimation of established structures of power and inequality.

The civil rights movement is within our memory. Again, there were the prophetic elements of specific criticism, public protest, sacrifice, death, jailings, beatings. Rosa Parks was specific when she refused to sit at the back of the bus. Those who integrated lunch counters were specific in their criticism of the existing establishment and held their place, notwithstanding verbal abuse and physical violence. Now, integrated lunch counters, buses, station waiting rooms and lavatories, are part of the status quo and few think of the struggles which achieved them.

Every one of these and other social changes that have happened have been characterized by ... prophetic elements – specific criticism and protest movements which were not polite. To steal a phrase from joggers and other athletes, “no pain, no gain.”

But one prophetic element that Amos recognized is still to be achieved. That element is a prevailing sense of the public good, a sense of civic virtue which encompasses “liberty and justice for all” - words we say so glibly in the Pledge of Allegiance. But, as we have discussed in our Wednesday night discussion, for considerably more than 100 years our nation’s politics have been negotiations between groups. An overall prevailing consensus has been lacking.

When people gathered for a national celebration in Israel in those ancient times, Amos addressed the people. First, he told them that because Damascus had been evil in war, Yahveh would destroy them. The listeners liked that – Damascus was a foreign nation.

Then Amos said that because of the cruelties of the Ammonites, they too would be crushed. Moab was singled out for its injustice. This pleased the crowd too; good show when one’s enemies get blasted.

Then Amos, in what was a masterpiece of oratorical psychology, said that Yahveh would punish Israel too for swindling the poor, for denying them justice, and [for] immorality. That, the crowd did not like. He had stopped preaching and started meddling.

Now while some of us are not convinced that God/Yahveh will punish us for our vices, injustice, and lack of a national and universal vision, events may do the job for Yahveh. We are not a nation exempt from self-interest, hunger for power, or fear of losing privilege.

The achievement of a prevailing vision or goal of the public good seems the most difficult, but also the most necessary goal for a nation and world.

But as R. B. Y. Scott, another scholar of the biblical prophets wrote, “The prophets do not and cannot prescribe political, economic, and cultural forms and institutions; they can and do insist, that whatever may be the apparent necessities of social order, its methods and principles are to be judged by their human consequences. It is the spiritual fruit of a social order which determines whether or not it will survive in a world where Yahveh’s ... righteousness is matched by his power. The prophets make plain to us that the onus rests on the defendants of any established social order, as it rests equally on those who champion an alternative structure, to show what they defend or propose is a society which is congenial to ethical religion and productive of human values and is the concrete expression of real community among them.”

The Fellowship Of Wild Geese

March 16, 1986
Unspecified Location (probably Lakeland)

The Fellowship Of Wild Geese
(Abbreviated for Annual Meeting)

Perhaps you, as I do, perceive both the likenesses and differences of the flight of wild geese and the members of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship. These likenesses and differences are relevant as we soon convene for our annual meeting.

The geese can fly a 71% longer range when they fly together in the V formation, than when a solitary goose tries to make it alone. I don’t suppose anyone knows, fully, how these birds developed their aerodynamic facility. Instinct in the non-human world is just another name for mystery. How the wild geese navigate on their flyways has never been completely explained, although a variety of instinctual, celestial, and navigational aids have been suggested.

But in our fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, we are aware that being together when we have set objectives, and taking off for their accomplishment, is a necessary condition. Our uplift is not due to any action of wing tips. None of us are wild geese, or for that matter, angels. Our uplift comes from shared goals and the sighting of a flyway that will take us there. We must set the goals. We must find the flyway, we must share the tasks, we must uplift ourselves without the benefit of wing-tip aerodynamics.

Then think how, as the wild geese press on, they have a way of rotating their leadership so that the leader does not get worn out. No one knows how the wild geese rotate their leadership. But it is a reality that in human affairs, decidedly including religious fellowships and churches, [that] too many times, hard-working leadership becomes burned out. When that happens, enthusiasm wanes, and sometimes we see them no more.

Our rotation in leadership is needed both for the sake of the duty-worn and for the never-ending need for the infusion of novel ideas, improved methods, and fresh enthusiasm that rotated leadership can provide. Thus, the yearly process of nomination and election.

But because we are human and fragile, our democratic processes are not always [as] instinctually smooth as the fellowship of wild geese. We do not all think alike, but I trust we all think. Therefore, we proceed by rules and procedures.

Edward Lindemann, the social scientist, once wrote,

“Experience, in the democratic way of life, has it seems to me, demonstrated that under democratic conditions there should never be an expectation of perfect realization of ideals. Democratic solutions, in other words, are always partial, never complete. Perfection and democracy are incompatible.

“Democratic experience appears to have demonstrated that diversity is superior to uniformity.”

Before us are important decisions of growth and expansion; before us, the election of leadership.

One thing more, in the fellowship of wild geese, when one of the flock falters, another accompanies it to earth for a rest. In our human ways, I know that many of you have cared in situations of need that may be known, or may be known only to the one who helped and the one who helps. The need is to continue that caring. Such caring is a strand that, if omitted or neglected, will make any rousing cheers of our progress sound a bit hollow.

As a concluding reminder, let me repeat the words of John Dewey.

“The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by the grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link.

“Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying, and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible, and more generously shared than we have received it.”

Can Sir Galahad Save Us?

March 2, 1986
Lakeland

For me, these turbulent days make relevant the peril of falling victim to the Galahad frame of mind. [Because] our national motives are pure and our way of life threatened, our President, based on his convictions, urges that the military appropriations be increased, even though over $1 trillion has been spent for arms in the last four years; another $100 million for the Contras in Nicaragua because they are the good guys and the Sandinistas are the bad communists. [CJW note: Communist Party Congress – everything OK but for imperialist United States]. The people in the Philippines are rejoicing because Mrs. Aquino, who has been compared to Joan of Arc, has triumphed over Marcos. This November in Florida and other states, governors, congressmen and senators will be chosen. The campaigns are well under way; millions of dollars will be spent to persuade us that our salvation lies in this candidate or that, because he/she is beyond reproach and the opponent is flawed, inept, or corrupt. Perhaps our authentic national and world problems are compounded by an over-supply of Sir Galahads.

But, can Sir Galahad save us?

Vulnerability to being victimized by the “Galahad Syndrome” is one of the chronic diseases threatening all lives and times. The Galahad Syndrome is the name that a social scientist, some years ago, attached to the combination of virtues which characterized the mythical Sir Galahad. Without fear and without reproach, Sir Galahad was the perfect knight. Because he was celibate, he had no blemish of character, no unworthy motives, he was able to slay dragons, vanquish evil, and rescue helpless ladies. Galahad saw the Holy Grail unveiled and was transported to heaven triumphantly. “His strength was the strength of ten because his heart was pure.”

Why is such pristine purity a danger? To count on Sir Galahad to save us involves the perils of self-deceit and the swindle of the too-easy answer.

In the epic literature of the Welsh, Celtic, and [Saxon?] peoples, Galahad is innocent, courageous, simple, and chaste. Tennyson put these words in his mouth:

“And in the strength of this I rode,
Shattering all evil customs everywhere,
And past through Pagan realms, and made them mine....”

Galahad was not an historical figure, but a myth derived from ancient tales, which were transformed and garnished by 13th century romantic chivalry and the miraculous, sacramental religious ideas of that time. There are levels of meaning in myths, as Joseph Campbell has written in his penetrating studies of mythology, but that is not my subject today.

The myths of the days of chivalry may be exciting reading for juveniles and, for that matter, we adults in romantic moods, but one of humankind’s most common blunders occurs when the Galahad idea captures the mind of a person or a nation.

Javert, the policemen in Les Miserables, is obsessed to the point of madness with the letter of the law, rather than its spirit. Hugo, writing of this relentless guardian of the law codes, notes, “Nothing could be more painful and terrible than this face which revealed what we may call the evil of Good.” Paul Tillich wrote, “The power which is necessary for every bringing to fruition of something alive has the tendency – in the political just as in the personal dimension – to cut loose from the goal which it should serve, ... and then to develop a reality destructive of frontiers and contrary to nature. It is not power that is evil, but the power which is cut loose from its essential limit.” (THE FUTURE OF RELIGIONS, p. 60).

The old fish story of Jonah gives another clue to the perils of the Galahad obsession. Jonah feels called to go to the Assyrian metropolis of Nineveh to bring the religion and message of the Hebrew’s God. Before he has a chance to preach his convictions, the king of Nineveh and his people had turned to the worship of Yahveh.

Instead of being gratified at this reformation, Jonah was aggrieved and resentful. He was angry because the people of Nineveh had found their own way to a better religion. He could not claim the crown of religious conqueror. Like Ahab in a more recent fish story, Jonah wanted to play God.

The lesson has never been learned. As one considers the many centuries of Western history, it becomes apparent that too much is clouded-over with the self-deceit of the Galahad Syndrome.

As the early Christian church developed, the believers felt they had a divinely-inspired command to “go and make disciples of all the heathen, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” However much we may respect their devotion and ardor, believing that only in Christianity of a particular sort was there purity, wisdom, and salvation, and everywhere else, pagan dragons were to be overwhelmed by Christian Galahads, such was – and is – a false theology.

Christianity, even in its earliest decades, was a blend of cultures and religions. Even though many would claim that Christianity was a flowering of all the best of the past, does the blossom reject the twig? Can the ripened fruit claim that the bough which bears it is degraded, different, and should be destroyed?

Christianity received its philosophical base from the wisdom of the Greeks; Christianity benefited by the laws, ceremonies, and disciplines of the pre-Christian Romans, and became a great religion because of Hebrew monotheism, Hebrew social ethics, Hebrew prophecy, and Hebrew song.

Furthermore, the ascribing of the virtues of Galahad to various historical persons is one of the errors which oversimplified or biased history has produced.

One notorious instance is that of the King of the Franks in the 8th century – Charles the Great – Charlemagne. If a student of European history were asked which Christian monarch was known as the “Prince of Peace,” the acceptable answer would probably be Charlemagne. He was canonized as a saint by the Latin church in the 12th century. He is one of those about whom the legend has grown that he is not dead, but sleeping. When some great crisis threatens mankind, Charlemagne will awaken and, like Galahad, destroy the dragons of evil.

Now while Charlemagne did do some notable things, including the promotion of education and the building of libraries, it is sheer fabrication to think of him as the “Prince of Peace.” He was almost constantly at war in what are now Italy, Germany, France, and Spain. The biographical historian Richard Winston wrote of him, “No one seemed to think that Charles’ incessant wars were inconsistent with his being the Prince of Peace .... Peace always seems more peaceful to the victor than the vanquished. And the Franks were winning almost everywhere.”

It is not only in religion that we should resist thinking of ourselves as Galahads, but in our entire response to other people, their ways, and their ideas.

The people in every century, I suppose, believe that their time in history is the most critical of all ages. In the 20th century, we are no exception. There is some measure of evidence to justify our belief in the importance, not only of the whole century, but the particular significance of these latter decades. We will either live in peace or die in war, utterly and finally.

In national and international social, economic, and political issues, the temptation is great to fall victims of the Galahad Syndrome.

The gospel of John (1 46/47) tells how Nathaniel, hearing stories of Jesus, says to Philip, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” and Philip answers, “Come and see.” There is strong temptation facing persons in our Western alliance to be like Nathaniel and ask skeptically, “Can any good come out of the Soviet Union? Or Nicaragua? Or Cuba?” A Soviet may ask, “can any good come out of the United States?” Philip’s pragmatic advice is still needed, “Come and see.” Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the eminent philosopher of world religions, wrote, “What a man (sic) does is misunderstood if conceived wholly from the outside.”

When we are sick with the symptoms of the Galahad Syndrome, we will be positive that our military, political, or religious tribe is innocent, chaste, pure of motive, and the savior of the nations. The only obstacle to world peace, some of our leaders and the leaders in the Soviet Union seem to believe, is the obstinacy or villainy of nations and peoples who are different.

Furthermore, a tragic viewpoint is to treasure the notion that if all the nations became like us in manners, governments, and economics, swords would be beaten into ploughshares and nuclear/biological war would no longer threaten us. Nothing could be more mistaken.

The Roman Brutus stabbed the Roman Julius; Kaiser Wilhelm was cousin of King George; Chaing Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung were both Chinese; Cain was Abel’s brother. Being like one another does not prevent wars. We have fought two wars against England, [and] two terrible wars against Germany. Of all the nations of Europe, we are most like the English and Germans in manner, culture, and religion. The most costly and tragic of our wars, the Civil War, pitted American against American in a tide of blood and bitterness, not yet fully ebbed more than 120 years after Appomattox.

[CJW note: the bloody and destructive 16th century wars of religion were fought by Christians against Christians – Catholics vs. Protestants. Iran and Iraq, both thoroughly Moslem countries, continue years of devastating war]

Similarities of history, religion, language, and culture bring many rewards, but offer no guarantee against war, disaster, or social struggle. Universalism is a proper noun when referring to our denomination, the UUA. We believe it an aspiring religion of depth which supports freedom, reason, and conscience. But it is universalism with a small “u” that can be the antidote to the poison of believing that only one group is pure and [another is,] without cause, to be reproached. Universalism in this sense is an attitude toward oneself and others which rejects the self-righteous deceit of the Galahad Syndrome. [CJW note: A universalism that admits the humanness of everyone – and to be human is to be fallible and self-interested, as well as idealistic and understanding].

The Countess in Christopher Fry’s play, THE DARK IS LIGHT ENOUGH, expressed our common lot. She speaks in pride and dignity, not in scorn or disdain:

“Innocent?
I am always guilty of what I do,
Thank God.
Let us say
We are all confused, incomprehensible,
Dangerous, contemptible, corrupt.
And in that condition pass the evening
Thankfully and well. In our plain defects
We already know the brotherhood of man.”

The one human family is not made up of identical products turned out like soda bottles on a spinning conveyor. We are all different – and none like Galahad (a Galahad that never was). The boundaries between good and evil are never so precise as the legends of the Round Table might persuade us. Kipling wrote, “What do they know of England, who only England know?”

To put Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s observation another way, What people or nations do is misunderstood if conceived wholly from the outside.

The chances of peoples and nations getting along together in peace will improve, not so much as we may begin to wear the same jeans, drive the same cars, view the same TV programs, read the same books. I believe most police departments would report that in sheer frequency of calls, domestic squabbles and violence are by far the most frequent. The task is to acknowledge, and if possible, appreciate, our differences, and live and let live.

From a planetary point of view, then, to count on one economic or political system to bring peace or one theology to bring all together in good will is most unlikely and hardly desirable.

There are no pure nations. Every nation has fears which can easily proceed from misunderstanding to antagonism to hate. There are no pure, completely true religions. We are human, fallible, self-interested, but with some capacity to grow beyond our faults when we perceive that the great task is not to slay dragons, but to share agreements which acknowledge differences. We all need high visions of peace and good will, but we need to guard against ideals becoming tainted with a sick passion to make everyone in our mold.

No One Shall Be Compelled

February 16, 1986
Lakeland

1986 is the 200th anniversary of the beginnings of religious freedom in our country. The Assembly of Virginia passed “An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in the Commonwealth of Virginia.” Thomas Jefferson wrote the Act; James Madison, with wisdom, judgment, and legislative skill saw that it was passed by the Assembly of Virginia. [It reads:]

“Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

“Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

“And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no powers equal to our own and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.”

Source: http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html

This was a momentous legislative act. In history, particularly Western history, for thousands of years, the allegiance between church and state had permitted and encouraged all manner of oppression, torture, and death in the name of religion.

In this 200th anniversary of the Virginia Statute (January 16, 1786) there are many important issues which could be highlighted. Under the limitations of time, the following deserve emphasis:

1. The “founding fathers” did not intend or presume that the United States was, or should be, a “Christian” nation.

2. The freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, written by James Madison (and which was a distillation of the Virginia Statute), has been both broadened to include the several states under the rule of the Federal Constitution, and extended to include many thorny issues.

3. There have been constant and continuing attempts to breach this “wall of separation between church and state” (Jefferson’s phrase). At this time, the hot issues are prayer in the public schools and President Reagan’s “Voucher Parochial Plan.”

First, the founders of this country did not believe or intend that this should be a “Christian nation.”

George Washington, first President of the United States, on at least two specific occasions stated this was not a Christian nation. He wrote a letter to this effect to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. In the Treaty with Tripoli, he also stated clearly that ours was not a Christian nation.

John Adams, second President of the United States, wrote, “It will never be pretended that the men who set up the American government had interviews with the gods or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven.” (Quoted, Muller, RELIGION AND FREEDOM IN THE MODERN WORLD, p. 8)

Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States: there is little verification needed of his attitude. He had drafted the Virginia Statute in 1777, although he was in Paris as Ambassador to France when Madison labored to secure the passage of the Statute in 1786. In Jefferson’s Autobiography (he was 77), he wrote that in 1786, an amendment was proposed inserting the words “Jesus Christ” before the phrase “holy author of our religion” (see Christian Century). Jefferson noted, “The insertion was rejected by a great majority in proof that they comprehend the mantle of the Statute’s protection, the Jew and Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and the infidel of every denomination.”

James Madison, fourth President of the United States, as we have noted, was responsible for the passage of the Virginia Statute and defeat of the proposed “Jesus Christ, holy author of our faith” amendment. Interestingly, that amendment was argued for by the Virginia patriot Patrick Henry, who may have forgotten his courageous declaration in the Revolutionary cause, “give me liberty or give me death.”

So any claims that are made by right-wing religious fundamentalists that our founders intended a Christian nation is simply false.

Second, the “freedom of religion” clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution, for which James Madison was primarily responsible, has been both broadened to include the several States, and extended to include many thorny issues.

For some years the First Amendment was not accepted or enforced by many individual States. Massachusetts did not completely separate church and state until 1833. Now, however, all the States must abide by the First Amendment.

Edwin Meese, the present Attorney General, seems to ignore or be ignorant of the development of Constitutional law. Meese derided the Supreme Court decision which struck down an Alabama prayer law. Meese claims that the First Amendment was not intended to limit the power of the States. But U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens criticized Attorney General Meese for this distortion or misinterpretation. (C+S, 12/85, p. 3). Stevens said, “Meese overlooks the importance of subsequent events in the development of our law. The Attorney General fails to mention the fact that no justice who has sat on the Supreme Court during the past sixty years has questioned the proposition that the prohibitions against State action that are incorporated in the 14th Amendment include the prohibitions against federal action that are found in the First Amendment.”

Within memory, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against state laws that would have permitted prayer in the schools, released time for religious purposes, and similar decisions.

Third, there have been and will be constant and persisting attempts to breach this “wall of separation between church and state.” The President of the U.S. is exerting his considerable power and charm to break down this “wall of separation”; I want to discuss briefly the issues of prayer in the public schools and the voucher system for taxpayers’ money to go to parochial and private schools.

Prayer in the public schools has been ruled unconstitutional. New York State, some years ago, was the scene of the “Regents Prayer” case. Hoping to compose a prayer to be recited by public school pupils, a prayer supposedly acceptable was composed. But after much publicity and controversy, the Regents Prayer was found unconstitutional. American pluralism in religion is a fact. The wide range and many differences in the religions, not to speak of the many who reject religion in its particular forms, make it impossible to write a prayer that will not offend some, who can make a legitimate claim that their religious freedom under the First Amendment would be invalid by any particular prayer in the public schools.

Nevertheless, the President, in his State of the Union address, used his eloquence to argue for prayer in the public schools and will use his appointee powers to reverse Supreme Court decisions, if he can.

The absurdity of trying to create a public school prayer which will infringe on no one’s rights is illustrated by Mark Russell, the humorous writer and speaker. He composed a “generic” Lord’s Prayer as follows:

“Our Father or Mother,
Who art either in heaven, nirvana, Mecca, or Salt Lake City,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
Providing thy will is that America is always the big winner over the foreign heathen.
Give us this day our daily white bread, black bread, Italian bread, Jewish rye, English muffins, or tacos,
And a quarter-pounder with cheese and a large fries to go.
And lead us not into temptation,
Or into school buses that take us to neighborhoods where the kids are different.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory,
Especially for people who still use words like ‘thine.’”

(CONTEXT)

Heavy-handed and exaggerated? Yes, but it illustrates how unlikely there can be any public school prayer which will invade no one’s rights.

Then, too, there is the current issue pushed by the current administration called the “Voucher Parochial Plan.”

This voucher bill, apparently written by Education Secretary William Bennett, would provide that parents of disadvantaged children could choose to take their children out of public schools and get tax-paid vouchers of $600.00 per child to apply to tuition at parochial and private schools.

The bill has been sponsored in the Senate by Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, and in the House by Representative Pat Swindall, Republican of Georgia. “Hatch and Swindall” - sounds like a law firm from a Charles Dickens novel!

As I see it – and believe thoroughly, the proposal is dangerous and damaging.

Public monies should be under public control. We do pay taxes for our public school system. If I choose, I can make my voice heard at school board meetings. I have a vote on bond issues. I can cast my ballot for choosing members of the county school board. None of these rights would prevail in the Voucher Parochial Plan. I would have no voice or influence in where that part of my tax money went or how it was to be distributed.

I have no objection whatsoever to private or parochial schools or to parents who choose to send their children to such institutions. Parents, for their own reasons which I would not question or oppose, have the right to opt for parochial or private schools. But I don’t want to pay for such choices.

Carl Rowan, the syndicated columnist, made pertinent comments, “The administration has tried to cut drastically federal appropriations for education. It has been unwilling to accept any federal responsibility for bringing salaries of teachers to a responsible level.” Furthermore, Rowan commented “to believe such a proposal will make under-privileged children better off is fantasy-land thinking.”

Voucher Parochial is both a not very subtle attempt to breach the wall of separation between church and state, and it is an attack on the public school system. How odd when our President is attempting to slash programs for public education, he eager to spend tax money for parochial and private schools. Aren’t we supposed to be in a budget crisis?

I’m not only negative toward Voucher Parochial, I’m positive toward the American system of public education. Of course many criticisms can be leveled. The public schools must deal with huge problems. But be it noted that most of the problems are handed to the public schools, not created by the public schools. Urban ghettos, parental disinterest or neglect, stultifying environments, young delinquents, the druggies, the malnourished, the hostile – all these arrive at the public school, [and are] not made by the public schools.

I believe any fair reading of American history will support the thesis that public schools have educated; in the great tidal years of immigrants, the public schools Americanized the children of parents from many lands and different cultures. How much of America’s wealth is due to the public schools preparing students for business, technical, scientific, and governmental careers?

In times such as these, the public school system needs more support and adequate funding, not diversion of resources to institutions beyond public control.

In conclusion, I’m intrigued that some religious groups want to break down a system that has worked so well for them. In no other country where Christians of the hundreds of varieties are in the majority is organized religion stronger. Churches, large and small, are supported and supported well by the voluntary subscriptions of its members. All reports and observations indicate that not in the U.K., not in Europe, not in Scandinavia, is there enthusiasm and support for religious institutions as there is in the U.S. Why should the right-wing fundamentalists want to change that? The system has worked for them and all of us. Furthermore, those whose beliefs rule out any formal religious affiliation are free here NOT to support institutions in which they do not believe.

Thus, 1986, the anniversary of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, is a not-to-be forgotten historical landmark and reminder of a most precious element in our national life: religious freedom, a freedom which, if diluted or infringed, will be an incalculable loss.