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.”