The Human Side Of The Holidays

December 3, 2000
Venice

Years ago I read that when jazz musician Benny Goodman was talking with a woman at a party, someone dropped a champagne glass. At the sound of the shattering glass, the woman asked, “What was that?”

Goodman answered, “C Sharp.” We humans are like that – we respond according to our interests. To some the sound would have been startling, creating anxieties about a stained rug or someone drinking too much wine. Others might be amused at the awkward accident happening to somebody else. To Benny Goodman, the sound meant C Sharp.

Today is the first Sunday of the Christian Advent season, when Christian believers begin their preparation to celebrate the virgin birth of their Savior, Jesus, in a manger in Bethlehem. From different points of view, the Christmas holidays also bring out differing reactions and unlike interpretations. Unitarian Universalists many times have mixed feelings about Christmas. Some hear “C sharp”; some hear breaking glass. But the person who denies the power of feeling at Christmas season has never listened either to his fellow-liberals or acknowledged his own emotions.

We try to accommodate in various ways, sometimes sensitively, sometimes rationalizing, sometimes naively. An old friend remarked that Unitarian Universalists never mention Christmas without also referring to Hanukkah. I suppose we do that for several reasons: to recognize the wideness of the cultural patterns we celebrate in December; to included the liberation celebration of Hanukkah, which has been a part of the heritage of many of our families; to create an atmosphere for the cultural universality of December rituals – concerts, charitable giving, both personal and commercialized, and swinging parties.

There is no single origin of our mid-Winter celebrations. One flowing spring is seldom the only source of a mighty river. Other brooks and streams feed into it. We need remember the many sources of Winter celebration – not only Christmas and Hanukkah, but also many others, including in recent years, Kwanzaa.

India may be at least one of the sources of Western culture. The roots of Western cultural origins may have beginnings in the Indus Valley, as well as the Tigris-Euphrates basin and Egypt. There are other sources, including the Roman, Teutonic, and Scandinavian.

Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, the people of India were devoted to the god, Vishnu. Even today, Vishnu may have more followers than any other Hindu god. Originally, he was a Sun god. As the Brahmanic religion developed, Vishnu became the principal god to whom sacrifice was made. In the Hindu trinity, he is the second member who assumes human form. There are differences between Hindu and Christian mythology. Vishnu was incarnated many times, sometimes as animal, sometimes as man. We should note that what we call the “messianic tradition” was a continuing hope in Hinduism. One day, Vishnu would reappear, he would cleanse the earth from sin, remove the shadows and bring about the reign of justice and truth.

Some of us have roots in the Scandinavian peninsula. The traditions of the Norsemen tell the stories of the great celebrations on the occasion of the Winter Solstice. The feast was known as Jul and honored the divine birth of Freyer.

Zoroaster, who lived six or seven centuries before Jesus, was the founder of the religion that bears his name, Zoroastrianism. This prophet of Persian religion taught that there was a struggle constantly between good and evil. Mythology and legend accumulated after his time on earth. Followers declared that Zoroaster was born of a virgin, was visited by adoring Magi; in infancy[, he] was saved from a powerful enemy. In other myths, the life of Zoroaster paralleled the Gospel stories about Jesus.

About the birth of Buddha, there also grew a miraculous mythology, although he had taught ethics and rejected the gods. Years after his death, he was transformed into what in life he had rejected, a god. Parallels with the Christian stories are found also in the mythology that accumulated around Confucius, who lived about the same period as Buddha, about the sixth century, B.C.E.

Many cultures, many historic periods, many religions have contributed to our Christmas. If that’s all there was to it – a package of myth and legend, tied with the ribbons of strange customs and superstitious rites of numerous early religions, held before us in order to encourage the spending of money, not to speak of exhausting us physically, we could recommend that Christmas be ignored. If the complex patterns of ancient Christmas myth and legend were all there was to it, we could protest that promoting the celebration of Christmas strengthened belief in the unreasonable and unwholesome doctrine of inherited sin. Furthermore, we could protest with justification that adoration and praise of a virgin mother placed an unnecessary and inhuman stigma on natural love between man and woman and the children born to them.

But that’s not all there is to it. There may be considerable dilution of feeling in placing other customs in conscious juxtaposition with Christmas and Hanukkah, because we may not be able to have our cake and eat it too, as far as the deepest and most poignant sentiments of Christmas are concerned.

When we turn to the universality of the Winter feast, when we ring the changes on the likenesses of Christian, Buddhist, Persian, Chinese, and Scandinavian myths, there may be a real question as to whether we just want an excuse for a party, or feel a reluctance to be too different, whereas for the convinced Christian believer, Christmas is Christ’s Mass, and the Mass celebrates the unique and once-and-for-all supernatural atoning sacrifice of God in Christ for all humankind. But I know no Unitarian Universalists who celebrate Christmas for that theological reason.

We like the carols with lovely melodies, with wistful words, whose theology we ignore. An old friend in a church I served many years ago used to say around the Christmas season, “What we won’t say, we sing.” We tend to convey by our attitudes that inasmuch as many faiths have saviors, we will taste them all, like a wine-tasting party.

Do we celebrate because the old pre-Christian tides of anciently imbedded feelings surface when the Winter Solstice arrives? Or, in spite of our rejection of Christian theology, are we still sufficiently conditioned by the Christian centuries to want to celebrate Christ’s birth – and then explain it away to rid ourselves of any intellectual discomfort we might feel? The Christian Christmas stories and music are deeply moving even to an agnostic or atheist.

When one gets right down to cases, there is no more reason to celebrate the Winter Solstice than the theological Christ’s Mass. The early pre-scientific peoples believed the change from darkness to increasing light was the gift of the gods, who were unpredictable in their bounty. We have learned that the changing seasons and measurable variations of day and night are astronomically precise, predictable as planet Earth moves in its rotating, plotted orbit around our sun-star. There is perhaps even less reason for annual re-creation of the feasts of Anglo-Saxons, Teutons, and Scandinavians than there is for our Christmas worship, even though the pagan wassailing, tree worship, and slightly scandalous parties seem in truth to bring a more enthusiastic response in our day than the incarnation theology.

We do not wrestle seriously with these considerations because feelings prevail, hardly less so among self-classified rationalists and agnostics than with anybody else. Feelings will prevail because we will respond to the aroma and sight of evergreen and candle, the excitement of being busy for others, the sounds of Adeste Fideles and Handel’s MESSIAH, the abundance of sentiment, the image of Jul log (not in FL?) and the warmth of human affection.

On Ash Wednesday, the ashes used in most Roman Catholic churches, traditionally, are secured by burning the palms used the previous year on Palm Sunday. In a few countries, Scandinavian, I believe, the ashes, the visible sign of repentance, were the ashes of the Jul log burned the previous Christmas. Were these penitential customs an awareness that the Christmas dreams of peace and goodwill were not realized because of what we humans are and the ways we think and behave?

But in this season, can there not be moments when new content may replace both the superstitions of pre-history and theologies we can no longer believe? Yes! I believe so.

We celebrate the wonder of life in its lovely realization – the wanted, new baby in the manger of the poor. The story of the baby Jesus stirs us deeply because his is a universal story of parents who experience the shattering, mysterious compound of love, danger, fear, and hope, blended with the fact of pain, the surprise of human sacrifice, and the wonder of human growth.

We celebrate the creation of new human life. Do you remember Stephen Vincent Benet’s poem, “Nightmare for Future Reference”? It was written at the height of the Cold War, but we are still under threat with at least 7 or 8 nations possessing nuclear weapons, and who knows how many have biological death weapons in their secret laboratories? Benet’s poem goes:

“That was the second year of the Third World War
The one between us and Them....”

The poet goes on with laconic but sobering words in the framework of a father speaking to his son:

“The lab chief was no longer permitted guinea pigs for experiments and the statistical curve of the birth rate was in a steep and terrifying slide:

I didn’t ask them,
Not even your mother – she was strange those days –
But, two weeks later, I was back in the lines
And somebody sent me a paper –
Encouragement for the troops and all of that –
All about the fall of Their birth rate on Their side.
I guess you know, now. There was still a day when we fought
And the next day, the women knew. I don’t know how they knew,
But they smashed every government in the world
Like a heap of broken china within two days:
And we’d stopped firing by then. And we looked at each other –
Well, I’ve told you now. They tell you now at eighteen.
There’s no use to tell before.
Do you understand?
That’s why we have the Ritual of the Earth,
The Day of Sorrow, the other ceremonies.
Oh, yes, at first people hated the animals
Because they still bred, but we’ve gotten over that.
You can call it a virus, of course, if you like the word,
But we haven’t been able to find it. Not yet. No
It isn’t as if it had happened all at once.
There were a few children born in the last six months
Before the end of the war, so there’s still some hope,
But they’re almost grown. That’s the trouble
They’re almost grown.
Well, we had a long run. That’s something. At first they thought
There might be a nation somewhere – a savage tribe.
But we were all in it, even the Eskimos.
And we keep the toys in the stores and coloring books,
And people marry and plan and the rest of it,
But you see, there aren’t any children. They aren’t being born.”

Some psychologists interpret the image of a child in a dream as indicating the beginning of new life in a patient. New Life! We know that to define human beginnings as the fertilization of ovum by sperm is to describe, not explain. The emergence of living form, the growth of limb, mind, emotion – all these are/wonderful for diagnostic words. Everyone who has ever held a young baby knows that.

At this season, carol, candle, creche, and evergreen remind us with gladness that children are still being born. What theologically is called the “incarnation” is an all-human occasion for renewing the feeling of glad mystery that life forces are still with us, “the light that lighteth every one that cometh into the world.” No particularized theology may monopolize that full joy and deep wonder.

We celebrate another universal feeling. Church historian Hans Lietzmann helped put this in historical and cultural perspective (A HISTORY OF THE EARLY CHURCH (Vol II, p. 166 – 168). The Roman poet Virgil (79 B.C.E. – 14 B.C.E.) had predicted a time when a savior, coming to the world as a divine child, would erase sin and usher in a golden age. Many Romans thought that Caesar Augustus was that divine incarnation. For centuries to follow, all Caesars were deified. The Age of Augustus was extolled as one which brought better fortune and lessening misery as the Pax Romana brought universal peace. Temples of Peace, dedicated to Rome and Augustus, were built in city after city. Wrote Lietzmann, “A community of feeling passed over the boundaries of the provinces and the differences of race, and created the vitally necessary ideology of the Roman Empire.” So it is today – there is a community of feeling which is all too brief. There are World War I legends of soldiers climbing from the trenches and meeting as friends in Christmas battlefield truce. Personnel executives have told me how difficult it is to discharge persons at Christmas. We are more generous, not only with family, but also to worthy causes and needy persons. Christmas is an incarnation briefly of the dreams of all peoples of the world as it might be, when there would be peace on earth and goodwill to all. We do not need the psychologist to tell us that the babe in the manger or the crib room of the hospital is a sign of hope, for on him/her we project our deepest yearnings, the purer dreams of a human society where the symbols of religion will represent the reality of peace and the full recognition everywhere of the dignity of every person. Dr. Edmund Sinnot (THE BRIDGE OF LIFE) wrote, “Man’s objective now is not to make superior individuals reproduce themselves more efficiently, but to make individuals superior. Greatness will not be the result of evolution, but of aspiration.” (p. 124)

Consider four lines from W. H. Auden’s poem, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”,

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.”

Because humankind has a dream, still persuade us to rejoice. There will come a time, in a couple of weeks, when the long night ebbs and more light shines on the babes of the world. When that illumination moves silently, transforming shadow to light, then something in our bones, our blood, our cultural heritage cries out that no matter how dismal the prospect for human redemption, no matter how formidable the portents of disaster, in spite of the blows with which we have been struck, there is a spirit of creation abroad in the world which calls us to protect the innocent, to warm our homes with light and love; and reverently embrace the cosmic mystery, which, I believe, underlies all the matter, energy, and value structures of this universe, this planet, our home.

Centuries before the Christian era began, long before the liberation struggles of the Maccabeans formed the Hanukkah celebration, the Greek dramatist Euripides had words for this occasion in the concluding prayer chorus of IPHIGENIA IN TAURUS, (p. 89):

“O great in our dull world of clay,
And great in heaven’s undying gleam,
Pallas, thy bidding we obey:
And bless thee, for mine ears have heard
The joy and wonder of a word
Beyond my dream, beyond my dream.”

That is the aspiration for the human side of the holidays – we hear the joy and wonder of a word and a world beyond our dreams, because the fulfillment of hopes depends upon the quality of our aspirations and upon our persistence in making real what has been ideal.

[Editor's Note: This sermon appeared at the end of the final (2004) bundle of musings, but was dated as being from the year 2000.]

The Unsponsored Mind

November 2, 2000

Steve Allen died, Monday of this week. He was an immensely talented man in many areas of theater and television, including pianist, composer and lyricist, author and first star of the TONIGHT show.

“The unsponsored mind” is a phrase coined by this versatile, thoughtful courageous man. When he was on the air many years ago, Mr. Allen protested that sponsors were attempting to limit his freedom to express personal opinions. When Mr. Allen signed a petition urging clemency for a prisoner condemned to death, a sponsor became alarmed and exerted pressure to compel Allen not to become identified with any more “controversial” matters and problems. Amid this insistence not to rock any boats which might have a dampening effect on sales of the sponsor’s products, Mr. Allen protested that it is one thing to sponsor entertainment. It is quite another to expect that the sponsor can control the performer’s mind in the marketing “pitch” in which commercials are produced.

Mr. Allen’s brave position stimulated me to a sermon many years ago. While not reproducing the whole sermon, the opening paragraphs were:

The value of the unsponsored mind is not limited to the commercial, entertainment world. The free mind principle is the root of our religious faith. Everything in our heritage grows branches, blossoms and fruit from that fundamental root.

The unsponsored mind is the most vital of intellectual responsibilities. The unsponsored mind is neither a flippant cynicism which glibly rejects serious matters, nor is it a gullible naivete which lightly floats higher or lower with every changing tide of public opinion.

In Bunyan’s timeless allegory, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, when Christian runs to seek eternal life, two neighbors seek to bring him back – one is “Obstinate”, the other “Pliable”. This is an allegory of the unsponsored mind, too.

As Milton wrote, “truth is a running stream, not a locked in pool.” When we fail to reconstruct the truth on the occasion of new discoveries of the mind or fresh combinations of accruing human experiences, then we are captured by old “Obstinate.”

The comparable hazard is that we shall confuse an open mind with a vacant one. Then, as in Bunyan’s allegory, Pliable is robbing us of conviction. Disaster is created by gullible mentalities as well as obstinate ones. The irrationality of the mob, the shallow minds which flutter with the breeze of every doctrine, no matter how palpably false, deters progress and inhibits strong ethical behavior. To the pliable we say with Emerson, “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “the one thing necessary in life as well as in art, is to tell the truth.”

STEVE ALLEN, you will be sorely missed.

Focus

September 27, 2000

To begin each chapter of his book, WISDOM OF THE AGES, Wayne W. Dwyer uses a particular quotation, usually from an ancient source, several times from Hindu or Buddhist sources.

In his chapter, “Triumph”, Cicero is quoted on “The Six Mistakes of Man.” Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. – 43 B.C.) was Rome’s most famous orator. Dwyer points out, (p. 22) “[Cicero] was a brilliant orator, lawyer, statesman, writer, poet, critic, and philosopher who lived in the century before the birth of Christ and was momentously involved in all the conflicts between Pompey, Caesar, Brutus, and many of the other historical characters and events that make up ancient Roman history. He had a brilliant and long political career and was an established writer whose work was considered the most influential of its time. In those times, however, dissidents were not treated kindly. He was executed in 43 B.C.”

Cicero’s “Six Mistakes of Man:”

• The illusion that personal gain is made up of crushing others.


• The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.


• Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.


• Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.


• Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study.


• Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Wayne Dwyer goes on to elaborate and embellish each of Cicero’s points. Dwyer writes well in the genre of what we used to call “positive thinking.”

For me, however, Cicero has invited each of us to think out applications evolving from our own experience and knowledge. I decided to focus on one of his six precepts sequentially, one each day for six days. I am not aware of becoming any wiser, but, somehow, I have a deeper and more sensitive awareness that a good life must embrace warm relationships with all persons in our orbits and include ideas that are the pathways to meanings.

When you come across some ethical or aesthetic inspirational sentences, I suggest you focus on them, taking one a day for several days. Think about it daily; reflect on it before each meal; use it as a mantra as you lie down for the night’s sleep. You, too, may find it a rewarding experience.

Remember Helena’s soliloquy in ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL? Shakespeare provided a text for this musing:

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.”

Land Of The Bean And The Cod

August 30, 2000

This is an expanded comment on an E-mail sent to John and Renee about a year ago.

In a citation some years ago, I was described as a “Son of Massachusetts.” That I am, born in Boston in 1911. As the odds are that I am not likely set foot in the Bay State again, I feel nostalgic every once in a while. Were it not for New England winters, I would have been seriously tempted to make my retirement “digs” there.

Growing up as a child of a Swedish immigrant father and a mother who was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, I was not a “Yankee” - immigrants and their children were not eligible for that title. For us, the boys in my neighborhood, Yankees were our opponents. We would sometimes gather in a gang, walk to better neighborhoods and seek trouble with “Yankee boys”. For the most part, just call each other names, although on rare occasions, some fisticuffs.

For years I did not question the romantic bosh which was taught in school or emphasized in the press, particularly at holiday times. The Pilgrims and Puritans were very much romanticized, I later found out. The Puritans around Boston were characterized as hypocrites by visitors. They executed Mary Dyer on Boston Common because she was a religious heretic. They banished Roger Williams and others, again, because their religions differed from the Puritan (Calvinistic) way. In Salem, twenty women and one man were executed because they were alleged to be witches.

The Pilgrims, settled in Plymouth were, maybe, a little better but many of their myths are unfounded. The book, SAINTS AND STRANGERS, by George Willison (which I own) describes some of their ways. Mayflower descendants tried to get the book banned. But the Pilgrims were not all saints. They stole the seed corn the Indians had stored for the next year’s planting. The landing on Plymouth Rock is a questionable legend, in spite of the canopy covering a rock in Plymouth Harbor. The rock was assembled from several pieces, late in the 19th century. Myles Standish led a group of armed Pilgrims to Wollaston to attack Roger Morton and his group because they did not like Morton’s “paganistic” practices such as dancing around the Maypole.

There’s more I could cite, including their justification for wiping out Native Americans by referring to the Biblical precedent of the conquest of Canaan, including Jericho, where all the inhabitants, men, women (except one), and children were slaughtered by the invading Israelite tribes. Other instances in Scripture were used as justification.

My old friend, the late Carl Seaburg, in his book, BOSTON WAYS, quoted a limerick:

“Here’s to the town of Boston
And the turf that the Puritans trod,
In the rest of mankind
Little virtue they find,
But they feel quite chummy with God.”

However, there is much of value in New England, past and present. One enduring memory is how impressed I was as youngster by the statue by Cyrus Dallin outside the Museum of Fine Arts, “The End of the Trail”, figure of an American Indian on his horse, slumped over, totally discouraged. The sculpture signified the unstoppable conquest by Europeans.

There were poems learned in school, fragments of which I still remember – Emerson’s “Concord Bridge” for example.

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled.
Here the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.”

There is the poem which started collections in schools around the nation to preserve the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,”

“Aye, tear her tattered ensign down,
Long has she waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
Her banner in the sky,”

The Boston area has a superb complex of first-class universities and colleges: Harvard, M.I.T., Tufts, Wellesley, Brandeis, Radcliffe, Boston University, Boston College, Bentley, Emerson, Lowell Textile. Northeastern. Where in the world, in such a small geographical area, can that array of educational facilities be matched?

The historian, Drummond, noted, “In 1860, of the 321 high schools in the United States, half were in Massachusetts.”

For years, Boston had the “Watch and Ward Society”, which took upon itself the censoring of books and the monitoring of public entertainment, condemning what these self-appointed judges deemed immoral. For years and years, however, in spite of such censoring, the Old Howard burlesque theater, just off Scollay Square, was an enduring institution. There were countless of us teen-agers and young men who received first lessons in the revealed beauties of female bodies as the strippers strutted, pouted, teased, and took their time in removing their flashy gowns, and then all the rest of their garments. A guy I knew, around the early 1930s, who played saxophone in the pit orchestra of the Old Howard (the best view) took unrestricted delight in fully detailing the anatomical charms and oddities of the most private parts of the “star of the week.” There are many of my generation who have fond memories of Ann Corio, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lily St. Cyr (“sincere” - get it?) They were the most glamorous stars of the Circuit.

The Old Howard is gone and Scollay Square is tamed – now Government Center, but the “Combat Zone” is probably still there for bawdy entertainment and education.

I have mentioned before how Fenway Park is a shrine for the loyal, frustrated fans who may never behold the Red Sox win the World Series (The Curse of the Babe). But good memories are somewhat compensating: Smoky Joe, Joe, Tom, Bobby, Ted, Walt, Dom, Ellis, Yaz, Tex, Lefty, Jim, Jimmy, Jimmy, Johnny, Dwight, Carlton. If you need last names, forget it.

Massachusetts brings memories other than Boston. In western Massachusetts on the Mohawk Trail there is, or was, the Hairpin Turn, a difficult loop for the autos of the 20s and 30s. Near the Hairpin Turn was the town of Florida (who named that one?) Also in the western part of the State, there were those who praised the drinking water from the Cobble Mountain Reservoir. “Cobble Mountain Gin” it was affectionately called.

Then there is picturesque Cape Ann, not as well known as Cape Cod. I was never more impressed with Nature’s FORCE as when I witnessed a violent storm breaking over Bass Rocks, near Gloucester.

That’s enough nostalgia. However, if you like to eat well and are in Boston, don’t overlook the many fine restaurants, the Durgin Park, the Union Oyster House, Jimmy’s Pier 4, or Jake Worth’s. When I was growing up not so many people “ate out”. Saturday night supper at home for many, if not most, families was Handschumacher’s franks and Friend’s Beans. I met Victor Friend as he was a member and staunch supporter of the Melrose Universalist Church.

I could go on and on. Another time I’ll comment on Boston religions – note the plural. In a prior Musing I recalled the Boston Marathon. I have not written about the swan boats in the Public Garden, cranberry bogs, Provincetown, or Revere Beach. But enough already.

Hypocrisy In The Headlines

July 16, 2000

In an article in the “U.S. News and World Report,” July 17, 2000, pages 18-20, the large type headline is, BLASTS, BUT NOT FROM THE PAST. In slightly smaller type, the sub-title was, THE GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO MAKE CHEMICAL PLANTS SAFER, RISKING LIVES.

Being curious about what this rather conservative, business-oriented weekly publication was blaming “the Government” for, I read the article. The report dealt with accidents inf chemical plants. Quoting the article:

“Since 1998, an average of five plant workers have been killed every month in the United States by explosions or leaks of chemicals that have become integral to modem life, according to tracking by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.... A recent analysis of the data by Wharton School researchers shows that from 1994 through 1999, these accidents injured nearly 2,000 people – mostly workers – and forced more than 200,000 nearby residents to evacuate their homes, schools or offices – or wait apprehensively – until the situations were under control. Property damage from 1,913 chemical accidents the industry reported over those five years: $1 billion.”

A chart was displayed, “Chemical accidents: A new EPA database of 14,500 plants shows these reporting the most accidents between 1994 and 1999. But many plants have yet to submit data.” Of the plants listed, Dow Chemical Co. Freeport, Texas, led the way with 21 accidents.

The chemical plants where these accidents occurred were NOT owned or operated by the Government. The plants were corporate enterprises. Should not these corporations be labeled as failing to make chemical plants safer, risking lives?

Marianne Lavelle, the writer for U.S. News blamed a government agency, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, for these accidents. Underfunded and with no authority to punish, only probe, the agency has been ineffective. If you are at all informed you must be aware that business interests constantly pressure Congress and State legislative bodies to reduce regulations and block new ones. The article reports “Nearly 70% (or 34,000) of the 49,000 companies required to submit detailed five-year accident reports to the Environmental Agency last year never bothered; the agency is now trying to determine whether they broke the law or masterfully navigated their way around it.”

Do not these chemical corporations have the primary, ethical, and humane responsibility to reduce hazards and increase safety measures for the workers and the public? Cannot they understand that such neglect in the relentless drive for ever-increasing profits injures workers and the public?

Do they not understand that sooner or later this neglect and opposition to regulations will result in much more government control when the citizenry becomes alarmed, informed, aware and ready to act?

Consider the award of billions of dollars this week, penalizing the tobacco companies for their failure of responsibility and willingness to deceive.

“Sow the wind; reap the whirlwind.”

Read the fine print and text beneath inaccurate headlines. The full story may be much different.

The Star And The Link

July 9, 2000
Sarasota

[Expanded from the original, dated 1976 and filed under 1979]

Reading: APOSTLE OF LIBERTY, George Akers, p. 70-71 (Jonathan Mayhew)

Thus for example, we ought not to believe that there is, or that there is not a God; that the Christian religion is from God, or an imposture; that any particular doctrine fathered upon it is really contained in it, or not; or that any particular sect of Christians is in the right, or in the wrong; ’til we have impartially examined the matter. And see evidence on one side or the other. For to determine any point without reason or proof cannot be to judge freely, unless it be in a bad sense of the word.

To attempt to dragoon men into sound orthodox Christians, is as unnatural and fruitless as to attempt to dragoon them into good poets, physicians, or mathematicians. A blow with a club may fracture a man’s skull; but I suppose he will not think and reason the more clearly for that; though he may believe more orthodoxly according to the opinions of some.

... We may as well pick our neighbor’s pocket for fear he should spend his money in debauchery, as take from him his right of judging for himself, and chusing his religion, for fear he should judge amiss and abuse his liberty.

Let us all stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free; and not sufer ourselves to any human impositions in religious matters; it is better to throw off the yoke even now, than let it gall us for a life time: it is not too late to assert our liberty, and free ourselves from an ignominious slavery to the dictates of men.

Sermon:

Jonathan Mayhew lived forty-five years between 1720 and 1766. Years after his death, some named him, “The Morning Star of the Revolution”; and a church historian has called him “The link between 18th century Puritan religion and 19th century Unitarianism.” Robert Treat Paine, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, said that Jonathan Mayhew was the “father of civil and religious liberty in Massachusetts and America.”

Surely he ought to be of interest to us. Particularly, because he would have been outraged to be called either “the star” or “the link.” Mayhew was loyal to the British King and British Parliament. In terms of Unitarianism as it developed, Mayhew was passionately opposed to the Arian, Deistic, and Socinian theologies which characterized many 19th century Unitarians. Mayhew would be equally irate at Universalist salvation theology of the time because he believed thoroughly in divine judgment, punishment, and hell.

Jonathan Mayhew was not always consistent with his own deeply-held principles. He preached tolerance, but was guilty of intolerance on more than one occasion. His contemporary, John Adams, who said he had been influenced by Mayhew, said that “a dozen volumes would be required to delineate the character of Jonathan Mayhew.”

Therefore, I am attempting to high-light the life of Jonathan Mayhew – his remarkable family heritage; the religious climates that prevailed in his age, the political influence he had on two continents, even though he was never in his life more than 100 miles from Boston, and the crucial intersections between his religious beliefs, the issues of the day, and how he used his pulpit to energize public opinion.

HIS REMARKABLE FAMILY

When Jonathan Mayhew was born in 1720, he was a fifth generation American. To me, a 1st generation American, born in the twentieth century, I am awed that an early 18th century child was a fifth generation American.

His forbear, Thomas Mayhew, left Tisbury, England, in 1631, one of the astonishing number of 20,000 persons who migrated to Massachusetts in 13 years. In 1641, Thomas Mayhew acquired title to the island of Martha’s Vineyard, 100 miles square. Thomas Mayhew named himself “Governor Mayhew”, with some accuracy because Martha’s Vineyard was the only feudal manor in New England until it was annexed by Massachusetts in 1691.

Martha’s Vineyard was not a deserted island. Living there were 3000 Pokanoket Indians, a branch of the Narragansett tribe.

While Thomas Mayhew Sr. was interested in land and making money from it, his son, Thomas Mayhew Jr., who had emigrated from England with his father, and somehow had received a liberal education, devoted himself to bringing Christianity to the Pokanokets. Thomas Jr. spent the remainder of his life as a missionary on Martha’s Vineyard with remarkable results. By the year 1652, “there were 283 converts, a school for Indian children and two Indian meetings each Sabbath.”

I am not asserting that Christian missionary efforts are a worthy enterprise. These Indians would probably have been better off with their own nature religion. However, I cannot be very harsh on such missionary enterprises when I recall that for years in the Unitarian directory there was listed “The Society for propagating the gospel among Indians and Others.” The 19th and 20th century Unitarians had missionary efforts in India, and the Universalists [had missionary efforts] in Japan.

The Praying Indians, as they were called, became so well-known that by 1649, a London missionary society began to help the Mayhews’ efforts. In 1657, Thomas Jr. was lost at sea on a voyage to raise missionary funds. His father sought a replacement for the missionary work, but finding no one, took on the task himself at the age of 60 and continued in it for 25 years.

Following his death, the family carried on the work. The Mayhew family suffered many deaths – infants, mothers in childbirth, fathers, sisters, and brothers dying too young. The family economic situation deteriorated over the years. But the mission to the Indians was as example of Indian/Colonist goodwill, seldom if ever duplicated. In the bloody King Philip’s War, 1675-76, the Pokanokets, although outnumbering the Europeans 20 to 1 on the island, never attacked. A church historian (Latourette) has written that the “missionary Mayhews represent what is likely the longest and most persistent family missionary endeavor in the annals of all Christianity.”

From this island heritage, Jonathan Mayhew, son of Experience Mayhew, great grandson of Governor Mayhew, arrived at Harvard in 1740 to be educated. He was not committed to the ministry then; that call came later in his Harvard years.

During his college years the New England theological kettle was bubbling with sermonic debate. The Monday newspapers printed full sermons preached the day before. Religious news was daily fare such as the astrological predictions and Ann Landers’ column are today. For the remainder of his life, Jonathan Mayhew was to increase the heat to boiling controversies.

THE RELIGIOUS CLIMATE THAT PREVAILED

From its beginnings, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had been Calvinist in its theology. The five points of Calvinism were (a summary perhaps oversimplified):

1) Absolute predestination
2) Particular redemption
3) Total depravity
4) Irresistible grace
5) The perseverance of saints

By Mayhew’s time, this tightly woven theological system showed some signs of unraveling. The rationalistic writings of Isaac Newton, John Locke, and other Deists were being read and discussed at Harvard. Biblical revelation as the complete and unerring word of God was no longer believed by some to be as seamless and complete tapestry.

As much as Rationalism, Arminianism had been threatening Calvinism. The liberals, among whom Jonathan Mayhew could be numbered by the time he finished Harvard and decided to become a minister, were increasingly Arminian, supra-rational and hedging on the doctrine of the Trinity. [Of] Arminianism, Conrad Wright, a Unitarian Universalist historian wrote, “Arminianism asserted that men are born with the capacity both for sin and for righteousness; that they can respond to the impulse toward holiness as well as the temptation to do evil; and that life is a process of trial and discipline by which, with the assistance God gives to all, the bondage to sin may gradually be overcome ....

“Supernatural rationalism asserted that unassisted reason can establish the essentials of religion: the existence of God, the obligations of morality, and a divine order of rewards and punishments.”

But unlike Deism, it insisted that natural religion must be supplemented with a special revelation of God’s will – the Bible.

“Finally the liberals tended to be anti-Trinitarian, largely because they were convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity was not scriptural.... They were not ‘Unitarian’, since only a small minority believed in the simple humanity of Jesus.”

Quite apart from Harvard’s heady intellectual climate, Jonathan Mayhew’s father, Experience Mayhew, was Arminian in his thought. He found in his mission work with the Pokanokets on the island that it was impossible to teach the complexities of Calvinism to the Indians. A God who chooses to save only a portion of mankind (His elect) could not be the basis of a widespread appeal to the Indians to become Christian and to give up their “pagan” ways. Experience taught them, “all that truly believe in Christ, Christ will save, Indians or English, high or low, bond or free.”

Although Jonathan Mayhew had some initial difficulty locating a church, in 1747 he was elected minister of West Church, Boston, a most desirable pulpit. The parish was largely composed of rising, prosperous merchants. Mayhew's salary was set at £15 a week, plus a full woodbox and house rent – a very comfortable salary package for that time.

Most of his Calvinistic colleagues shunned him because of his liberal views. Only a few would exchange pulpits with him, an important practice of the day. [CJW note: 3 sermons] One hundred years later, this was to happen to Theodore Parker when his Unitarian ministerial brethren refused to exchange pulpits.

One anecdote how some people detested Mayhew’s unorthodox preaching: While still a teen-ager, Paul Revere attended a service where Mayhew spoke. Paul’s enthusiasm for the sermon “resulted in a beating by his strict father, fearful that young Paul would stray into heresy.” The sermon that caused Paul Revere to be thrashed may have been one of the character inputs that years later, in 1775, motivated Paul Revere to make his famous ride awakening every Middlesex village and town that the British were coming.

Significant from the point of view of our theme of the Star and the Link were Jonathan Mayhew’s plain, bold statements on the right and duty of free inquiry, private judgment and liberty.

POLITICAL INFLUENCE AND THE INTERSECTION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND THE ISSUES OF MAYHEW’S TIME

While Mayhew always based his social commentary on scriptural foundations, inevitably because he spoke boldly, he was politically controversial. In 1750, he preached on “Unlimited submission and non-resistance to higher powers.” [CJW note: scroll Google] He cited the English traditions of the Puritan Revolution off 1642 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as the right of citizens to “rid their nation of a ruler who does not govern for the common good.” It was the most important defense of the right of revolution to be plainly said in the American Colonies prior to 1776. One sentence was memorable: “Rulers have no authority from God to do mischief.”

[CJW note - “ ‘Divine’ right of kings – quote Charles I: ‘The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kinds are not only God’s lieutenants, and set upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called gods.’ ”]

Mayhew also infuriated the growing Anglican Church in the Colonies by denouncing Bishops and leading the fight to prevent the settling of an Anglican Bishop in Massachusetts. That such an attitude infringed upon Anglican’s liberty to have a resident Bishop if they wanted one, deterred Mayhew’s attack not at all. His fear that the alliance of Crown and surplice in Massachusetts would destroy the freedom tradition outranked his belief in religious liberty. There were other inconsistencies in his polemics. But through his preaching, along with others who supported this point of view, the British Parliament and the King were influenced – they desisted in the attempt to appoint an Anglican Bishop for Massachusetts. They feared, and rightly so, that the political cost would be too great.

The last ten years of Mayhew’s life were continuously controversial – religious and political. He attacked the Calvinistic concepts of original sin and the Trinity. He taught that Adam and Eve sinned, but since they were the only violators, they alone were guilty. Furthermore that it was unjust and impossible for God to impute the sins of their parents to posterity. Such was not agreeable to truth, reason, or scripture. Therefore Christ’s atoning death was unnecessary. He still believed in Christ’s atonement, but this was a logical weakness in his theology. It was not only what he said, a few others were also saying these things, but in the way he said it – plainly, boldly, argumentatively.

Politically, Britain and France were fighting for possession of the North American continent. When had history ever offered a richer prize? Mayhew used his pulpit as a sounding board for Holy War. To him, France was both a tyrant and the champion of Romish superstition, “forces of the devil seeking to enslave both religiously and politically.” He reviewed the progress of the war in his sermons and gloated in the fall of Quebec.

Today, it may seem somewhat bizarre, if not immoral, that Mayhew should also remind his congregation frequently how good business was in wartime. But his congregation was largely comprised of merchants who prospered under war conditions. His biographer noted, “Seldom in the annals of Christendom had righteousness and profits seemed so indissolubly welded.”

Mayhew was loyal to England and praised the coronation of King George III.

Then came sparks that would eventually ignite the fuse of the American Revolution—the Writs of Assistance – the right to search for contraband and smuggled goods, which the Colonists merchants insisted was a violation of the fundamental property rights, with which Jonathan Mayhew publicly and eloquently agreed.

The Stamp Act of 1765 became a serious and inflammatory constitutional issue. British taxation without representation became obnoxious in Massachusetts. Mobs gathered and hung the English Governor in effigy. Then Mayhew preached on Sunday, August 25, 1765 (texts existing may be inaccurate). His text was from Galatians, V 12/13: “Ye have been called unto liberty.” The next evening, Monday, the mobs struck again, attacking the homes of customs officers, destroying records, looting and destroying the house of the Lieutenant Governor. Many believed, including English officials, that Mayhew’s sermon was the incendiary cause. An Episcopal clergyman wrote the Archbishop in England, “one of the most seditious sermons ever delivered, advising the people to stand up for their rights even to the last drop of blood.” !!!

Mayhew was shocked that he should be so accused. There was even some talk of transporting him to England for trial on charges of sedition. Pitt, the English Prime Minister, wisely decided that to attempt that would really inflame the Colonies. If they
did not know clearly then, who can tell now that Mayhew set off the riots? Whatever he said may have been as much in the tone, spontaneous gestures, and inflections he used as much as the actual text.

Anyway, the Stamp Act was repealed. When the notice arrived, there was the largest celebration in Boston's history – a 23 hour party with wine supplied abundantly by John Hancock, a wealthy merchant then, later the first signer of the Declaration of Independence.

But no revolution yet, for there were cheers for King and Parliament because they repealed the Stamp Act. But Parliament had reserved the right to legislate for the Colonies.

I have said nothing about Jonathan Mayhew’s happy marriage. This would be an important episode if there were Mayhew Chronicles as a few years ago there were the Adams Chronicles. Mayhew’s one surviving daughter, Elizabeth, married Peter Wainwright. Their first son was named Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright. Since then, the oldest son of the oldest son has always carried the name. Among them, JMW became an eminent Episcopal clergyman, who at the time of his death in 1854 was probably the most famous Episcopalian in the U. S. – Bishop JMW of New York. How ironic, when his grandfather had successfully been instrumental in preventing the King from naming and settling an Anglican Bishop in Massachusetts. Those who memories go back to World War II will remember General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, the hero of Corregidor. He was the fifth in the line to bear the name.

In 1766, three months before his 46th birthday, Jonathan Mayhew took ill, and died in a few days. The funeral procession was the longest Boston had ever seen.

Jonathan Mayhew was not a great original thinker. His logic was sometimes imprecise. He was influenced by European rational and Arminian thought. His theology was a link to later Unitarianism, although he would have been appalled at such coupling, and would have delivered a caustic, hostile sermon about it. His political thought, as well as his religious thought, was influenced by Thomas Hollis, a wealthy Colonist who constantly sent Mayhew books, particularly on political liberties as well as rational philosophical thought. Mayhew was not always ready to grant to others the privileges he claimed for himself. But thoroughly consistent heroes have never lived.

But Mayhew’s religious and political zeal was based on liberty, experience, inquiry, the right of private judgment, all undergirded by passionate convictions – guidelines which can serve all the rest of us inconsistent souls – at least until something better comes along –and that’s not likely.

Our second President, John Adams, when old in years, long retired, rich in honors, but still strong of mind and passionate for the United States, said, 68 years after he heard Mayhew’s sermon on unlimited submission, “If 4th of July orators really wish to investigate the feelings which produced the American Revolution, then that’s the sermon to read.”

[Postscript – from Abraham Lincoln]

We are a mighty nation and as we run our memory back over the pages of history, we find a race of men whom we claim as our fathers.

They were iron men, and we understand that by what they did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we enjoy has come to us.

They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.

Passion has helped us, but can do so no more; it will in the future be our enemy. Reason must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.

The sentiment in the Declaration of Independence gave liberty to the people of this country, and hope to all the world.

Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence and [with it] the practices and policy which harmonize with it.

Let all Americans, let all lovers of liberty everywhere, join in the great and good work.

Memorial Memory

May 29, 2000

Our minister, Don Beaudreault, stimulated this recollection. In his Memorial Day sermon yesterday, he spoke eloquently of times past, recalling his experiences of war and people in the armed forces. Neither Don nor I ever served in the armed forces, but he evoked a Memorial Day remembrance: The Memorial Day parade in Everett. (Some people called it Decoration Day.)

I was nine or ten years old – certainly no earlier than 1920. Standing on the sidewalk on School Street, near the parade’s beginning, even though I was a boy, I felt patriotic emotions.

More vivid in my memory is not the marching band, the detachment of sailors from Charlestown Navy Yard, or the auxiliary organizations, but the veterans of three wars. First, the veterans of the Civil War riding in the large open automobiles which were called “touring cars.” There were six or eight of these veterans, aged of course. Sixty years at least had elapsed since they fought at Gettysburg or Shiloh or stood guard at Appomattox when Lee surrendered to Grant. In their youth, some of them probably knew veterans of the American Revolution.

Then a larger group, veterans of the Spanish-American War, marched by, perhaps remembering a comrade who died of yellow fever or on San Juan hill.

The World War I veterans were the most numerous and vigorous, wearing their uniforms, their calves wrapped in puttees. (I’ll wager not many of you have ever seen puttees.) They wore their odd-shaped battle helmets which looked like small upside-down wash basins. These veterans were paying tribute to comrades who fell at the Argonne Forest or Belleau Wood.

I was too young to sense or appreciate the mystic bonds that these defenders of our freedom must have felt. The links are long and strong in our nation’s chain of memory. Wars are terrible disasters. I questioned the Korean War and was opposed to the Viet Nam war, but like Don, I cannot be a pure pacifist:

“Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land.”
(Sir Walter Scott)

Regardless of what could and should be criticized in our nation’s policies and actions, never should the men and women who served be demeaned or less than honored. I have experienced the emotions of pride and gratitude at Arlington National Cemetery. I have been deeply moved at the American Cemetery near Cambridge England. The soil of all continents and the deeps of every ocean are the final resting places of so many who shipped out and never returned. Yes, I am a patriot.

A few years later than the parade I described, when I was a Boy Scout, the Boy Scout Troop marched at the rear of the parade. We had no drilling in marching; and some of us were awkward adolescents, so we were a scraggly bunch. But numbered among that small troop were Carl Stein and Vincent DeLuca. By the time of World War II, I had not lived in Everett for some years, but somehow I learned that Carl Stein, an officer in the Tank Corps, had been killed in North Africa and Vinnie in France.

They were fellow scouts and good guys.

“Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down
his life for his friends.”
(Gospel of John)

The Venetian Virulence

May 1, 2000

This commentary is sparked by an article e-mailed me by my daughter, Marjorie. The following summary of the article started my thinking: From Ken Albers’ article:

“The director Ken Albers noted that of all the plays in the canon, the two that seemed to cause the most problems, create the most controversy and carry the most “baggage” are The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew.

“For Merchant, because it presents us with an atmosphere clearly rife with anti-Semitism, with protagonists who clearly embrace an anti-Semitic point of view, and with a Jewish antagonist as a figure of usury and venality that openly challenges our desire for a sympathetic anti-hero.”

Almost all of the article is devoted to Albers’ belief that The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare’s second-best love story, next to Romeo and Juliet. I disagree when I recall Rosalind and Orlando (As You Like It) and Beatrice and Benedict (Much Ado). The “baggage” in the Taming is our modern recognitions of male chauvinism and domination and the rise of Feminism.

I want to comment on the “baggage” that The Merchant of Venice must carry. That “baggage” is our present-day repudiation of anti-Semitism. The Merchant is rife with anti-Semitism. Co-incidentally, The Merchant was the first Shakespeare both my daughter and I attended. I was a sophomore in high school; many years later, she was in high school and similarly experienced Shakespeare for the first time. Today, both of us, as well as her husband. Dale, are ardent fans of the Bard. So are son John and [his wife] Renee and daughter Janet and [her husband] Ron. All of them make yearly pilgrimages to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

There were always large measures of anti-Semitism in the Western world, including our own country. If you are old enough, you can recall the anti-Semitic rantings of Father Coughlin and the activities of various semi-fascist and hate groups before World War 2. The Holocaust, when six million Jews died in death camps in Hitler’s insane reign, made most of us keenly aware of the genocidal results results of anti-Semitism. We were made more sensitive to the slanders, lies and discriminations perpetrated against Jewish people.

Shakespeare’s age was different. Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 and not allowed to return until forty years after Shakespeare’s death.

So it would be very unusual if Shakespeare did not share much of the prevailing anti-Semitism. The stereotype of Shylock as the usurer might have made Shakespeare think a little because his father, John Shakespeare, was accused of lending money at 20% interest, which was usury. The prevailing laws did not allow Christians to charge any interest at all. Jews were not allowed to pursue any occupation but money-lending.

In the play, at first glance, Shylock is the villain; Portia the wonderful heroine; Bassanio and Antonio are heroes; Jessica and Lorenzo are the romantic young lovers.

This “Musing” is titled The Venetian Virulence – virulence in the sense of hatred, rancor, animosity. I could have added “hypocrisy” to this.

Let us take a different look at the cast of characters:

Bassanio is a spendthrift, deeply in debt, and believes his financial crisis could be resolved by marrying an heiress, Portia. In other words, Bassanio is a fortune-hunter. His best friend, Antonio, to whom he is already in debt, will help him, but Antonio’s money is all at sea in shipping ventures. So he must borrow from Shylock. Antonio does this although the drama makes plain that he has despised and insulted Shylock.

In Act I, Scene iii, after Antonio has asked for the loan of 3000 ducats (six figures today), Shylock says:

“Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances:
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine ....

You call’d me dog, and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys?”

Antonio: “I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too...”

The transaction is completed, and the price for nonpayment of the loan is the pound of Antonio’s flesh. After Shylock has exited, Antonio remarks to Bassanio,

“The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind.”

Thus Antonio asserts that Christians are kind and Jewish people are not. Any look at Christian history knows that that is an arrant falsehood. Was Shakespeare being ironic?

Some scholars believe that Antonio and Bassanio are lovers, Bassanio being bi-sexual. The roles could be played that way. In our time, that would just be interesting or “so what.” But in Shakespeare’s time it would have been scandalous.

William Shakespeare may have been somewhat liberated from the pandemic prejudice against Jews when one appreciates Shylock’s famous, passionate plea:

“... I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means? ... If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we shall resemble you in that....”

Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, and her lover, Lorenzo, can beguile us with their lilting love poetry, particularly in the opening of Act V. We may overlook her crime in stealing her father’s money and jewels. But she is a thief. Lorenzo is quite willing to prosper too, with the wealth she robbed from her father. A fine romance? Hah!

Then consider Portia, the heroine. Her wonderful speech at the trial:

“The quality of mercy is not strained...” etc.

This has been the recitation at countless elocution events quoted in innumerable sermons; more remembered than any of Shakespeare’s soliloquys, except perhaps for Marc Antony’s obituary eloquence or Hamlet’s, “To be or not to be....”

But Portia’s mercy is a one-way street. She shows no mercy for Shylock, who must forcibly convert to Christianity [and] lose all his possessions.

The incidence of the rings, where Portia, disguised as the lawyer, persuades Bassanio to give her the ring, can only be described as a teasing trick with no worthy motive. In Julius Caesar, the Bard has Brutus say to Lucilius, “There are no tricks in plain and honest faith.”

Because he must become a Christian, Shylock can no longer maintain his money-lending business. Christian laws did not permit him, a Jew, to have been experienced in any other trade, profession or business. He is totally deprived of his daughter, his wealth, his business. His line in Act IV, Scene i, when all this has happened must be one of the saddest and most satirical in the Shakespeare canon, “I am content.”

You might assume from all this that I would not want to see The Merchant again. Quite the contrary. I am eager to watch how these various roles are played. With his dramatic skills and profound knowledge of how we act and what we are, Shakespeare may be saying look below the facades of human behavior and appreciate how we can be shallow or deep, wise or foolish, behave hypocritically or sincerely, act selfishly while seeming otherwise.

To dramatize these emotions, sometimes openly, sometimes subtly, is part of the never-ending genius, charm, and stimulus of Shakespeare’s works.

Sources:

The Merchant of Venice, W. Shakespeare

SHYLOCK, John Gross
SHAKESPEARE, THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN, H. Bloom
SHAKESPEARE A TO Z, Charles Boyle
ASIMOV’S GUIDE TO SHAKESPEARE, Isaac Asimov
SHAKESPEARE: A LIFE, Park Honan

The Unpurchasable

April 5, 2000

“The only Jesus Christ I know is Eugene Debs.” Fifty-five years ago, or so, I clearly remember Dean John Murray Atwood quoting this in a class where he was advocating the merit of the occasional biographical sermon. The Dean was quoting a prisoner at Atlanta Penitentiary where Eugene Debs had been sentenced to ten years in prison for his opposition to the United States participation in World War I. He also strongly criticized the 1917 Espionage Act, under which conscientious objectors were imprisoned.

I am now reading a thoroughly engrossing biography of Eugene Debs, HARP SONG FOR A RADICAL, by Marguerite Young. My surmise is that you will read about Debs in more Musings than this particular piece.

Born in 1855, Debs went to work at the age of 14 in a railway shop. He became a locomotive fireman. In a few years, he was a leading organizer of the American Railway Union, which lost its strength in 1895 when Debs was jailed for contempt of a Federal injunction when he was leading a famous strike against the Pullman Sleeping Car Company.

Debs became a convinced Socialist [and] established the Socialist Party of America. He was the Socialist Party candidate for President of the United States:

In 1900, he received 96,000 votes
In 1904, he received 400,000 votes
In 1908, he received 400,000 votes
In 1912, he received [900,000] votes.

In [1920], Debs ran for the U. S. Presidency from Atlanta Penitentiary. He received the unanimous votes of his fellow inmates, but prisoners’ votes did not count. But he received 915,000 votes, 6% of the total votes cast – a remarkable number for a man who was in prison.* Through all the campaigns he was know as “Debs The Unpurchasable.” (Gore and Bush, take note, neither one of you will ever be honored by that title.)

President Harding, responding to demonstrations and pressures from working people, pardoned Debs in 1921, but did not restore his citizenship of which he had been deprived by the WWI Sedition Act.

Broken in health, Debs died in 1926. In 1976, Congress posthumously restored his citizenship.

For many people, his speech at the 1917 Espionage Act trial was relevant, pointed and eloquent:

“Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest of the earth.... I said then, I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Shakespeare had words that were prophetic of Eugene Debs. In JULIUS CEASAR (Act 1, Sc. 3), Cassius says to Casca:

“Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;
Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat;
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit....”

[* Editor’s note: It was in 1912 that Debs won 6% of the popular vote. Although he enjoyed a slightly greater number of votes in 1920, when he was imprisoned, the total represented a smaller percent of the popular vote – 3.4%.]

How Things Happen

February 18, 2000

In his book, THE FUTURE OF HISTORY, the author [and] historian Howard Zinn is being interviewed by David Barsamian, who comments, (p. 154): “You conclude A PEOPLE’S HISTORY with this particular incident in 1992: ‘The Republican Party held a dinner to raise funds at which individuals and corporations paid up to $400,000 to attend. Fitzwater told reporters, “It’s buying access to the system, yes.” When asked about people who didn’t have so much money, he replied, “They have to demand access in other ways.”’

Zinn responded.... “He’s giving us good advice, telling us that if we are going to change the system, we are going to have to organize, we’re going to have to create power, we’re going to have to do it without that wealth and without the military force that the government has at its command. ...I wanted to end the book with that kind of warning and lesson given by somebody in the Establishment who knows how things happen.”

I was reminded of these observations when protests in Seattle at the meeting of the WTO (World Trade Organization) resulted in much media emphasis on the 500 or so people who were arrested. What, seemingly, was not news was that all but 51 of these cases were thrown out of court: sloppy police work, flimsy evidence, etc. In his newsletter, Jim Hightower wrote that the remaining cases represent misdemeanors, not crimes – “pedestrian interference,” or “failure to disperse.”

In addition, as I recollect it, there was very little standard media news informing the rest of the country and the world that there were 50,000 protesters, almost all of them non-violent, who took to the Seattle streets, including 30,000 trade unionists who marched peacefully to emphasize their views. They were protesting the possible exportation of millions of American jobs to third world countries where lowest wages and unregulated working conditions would prevail. Furthermore that unchecked pollution would add much to the sum of human misery. (I am not arguing at this point for the economics or environmental claims of the protesters. The subject is too difficult for my present limited knowledge. I hope to remedy that. But I can envision the dire possibility that world government might arrive as world government ruled by a few mammoth international corporations with United States military might as its police arm and enforcer.)

But the Seattle turmoil did illustrate the point that George Bush’s secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, made that when people didn’t have money, “they have to demand access in other ways.”

In TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (Act III Sc. 2), Ulysses says,

“Things in motion catch the eye
Than what stirs not.”

In this Black History month I read that historian David Kennedy related a startling reminder how, until the middle of the 20th century, there was prejudice so wide and so deep as to be almost unbelievable and unspeakable today (FREEDOM FROM FEAR, The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945).

Prejudice was rampant... “We will not employ Negroes,” the president of North American Aviation flatly declared. “It is against company policy.” Kansas City’s Standard Steel Corporation announced, “We have not had a Negro worker in twenty-five years, and do not plan to start now.” In Seattle, the district organizer of the International Association of Machinists put the Boeing Aircraft Company on notice, “labor has been asked to make many sacrifices in this war,” but the “sacrifice” of allowing blacks into union membership is “too great.” (Kennedy, p. 765)

President Franklin Roosevelt remained aloof from this obvious country-wide prejudice and discrimination. His concerns were lifting the depression and winning the war. Into this historical scene came A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, an all-black union. Randolph sensed “how things happen” when there is no money.

In 1940, at its annual convention, the Brotherhood, with Randolph’s determined leadership, passed a resolution urging the government to avoid discrimination against blacks in the armed forces. With the help of Eleanor Roosevelt it was arranged to present that resolution to the President in person.

The meeting with FDR included not only Randolph but also Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP and other black leaders.

Two weeks later, however, a Roosevelt aide announced that “the policy of the War Department is not to intermingle colored and white enlisted personnel in the same regimental units.” (Kennedy p. 766)

Randolph was shocked and angered because he thought FDR had given him a sympathetic hearing in the plea to desegregate the armed forces. Disillusioned, he called for Negroes to take to the streets. While some black leaders were reluctant, the idea caught on. But the possibility of 100,000 Negroes marching in Washington shook up President Roosevelt. Efforts to halt the idea failed and another White House meeting ensued.

Roosevelt failed to persuade Randolph to call off the planned march. FDR was equally adamant that the march must not occur.

Finally, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City, who was present at FDR’s request, said, “Gentlemen, it is clear that Mr. Randolph is not going to call off the march, and I suggest we all begin to seek a formula.” (Kennedy p. 767)

The formula agreed to was Executive Order 8802, which stated that “There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, color, creed or national origin.” The FEPC (Fair Employment Practices Committee) was established to investigate complaints and to act. There was no mention of desegregating the armed forces. That would not happen until President Truman ordered it in 1948.

However, one Negro newspaper noted, “ it demonstrated to the Doubting Thomases among us that only mass action can pry open the doors that have been erected against America’s black minority.” (Kennedy)

The FEPC was a forerunner of the civil rights struggles and marches of the 1960s, when so much enabling Federal legislation was passed. At the 1963 March on Washington, 250,000 people gathered (I was among them) and heard the cause of civil rights held high, particularly the famous I HAVE A DREAM oration by Martin Luther King, Jr.

A. Philip Randolph was a key figure in the March on Washington. From his staff he loaned Bayard Rustin to plan and organize many of the details of that spectacular protest. Bayard Rustin did a first-class excellent job in that huge, momentous task.

How Things Happen? Shakespeare provides advice. In Henry VIII (Act III, Sc. 1), Queen Katherine says to Wolsey and Campeius,

“Out with it boldly:
Truth loves open dealing.”

P.S. I have not [changed] “Negroes” because at the time of the events described, this was the common parlance. I am aware that today’s accepted term is “Afro American.”

Funny

February 12, 2000

While there is an idea or two cooking for MUSINGS 2000, the newest book to come to me sparks the first musing of this new year. If, as I do, you happen to believe in the healing power of humor and salvation by laughter, have I got a book for you!!! THE STUPIDEST THINGS EVER SAID BY POLITICIANS, by Ross and Kathryn Petras, will give you moments of hilarity on the darkest days. Dan Quayle seems to have the most citations, but Presidents Bush and Clinton are well represented. But there are many others who qualify for the title of this book. Here are samples:

ON THE AIR FORCE, UNWORRIED
[The Air Force is pleased with the performance of the C5A cargo plane], although having the wings fall off at eight thousand hours is a problem.
– Major General Charles F. Kuyk, Jr.

ON THE ALAMO, ENEMY SOLDIERS WE NEVER KNEW WERE THERE
[Alamo defender William Barret Travis] is the guy that with three thousand Russians threatening to attack ....
– Senator Strom Thurmond when campaigning for reelection in his hometown of Edgefield, South Carolina, reminding the audience of local heroes including Alamo defender, William Barret Travis.

ON ANIMALS, INTERESTING DEMOCRATIC OBSERVATIONS ABOUT
A zebra cannot change its spots.
– Vice President Al Gore

ON THE FUTURE. WHERE IT IS ...
It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future or past to the back.
– Vice President Dan Quayle

ON DESEXED WORDS
Personhole is not an acceptable desexed word.
– Shirley Dean, councilperson from the Berkeley, California, City Council, explaining why the council had changed the wording in a sewer equipment request back to “manhole cover.”

ON HUMAN RIGHTS, GREAT MOMENTS IN
You hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, “That man is a Red. That man is a Communist.” You never hear a real American talk like that.
– Mayor Frank Hague, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1938

ON METAPHORS, VERY BADLY MIXED
I wanted to have all my ducks in a row so that if we did get into a posture, we could pretty much slam-dunk this thing and put it to bed.
– Mayor Lee Cooke of Austin, Texas

ON POLLUTION. WHAT IT REALLY IS
It isn’t pollution that’s harming our environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.
– Vice President Dan Quayle

ON THANK YOUS, DAMP
I cannot tell you how grateful I am – I am filled with humidity.
– Gib Lewis, speaker of the Texas House.

ON X-RATED MOMENTS IN PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE
Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! Won’t you please bang that thing of yours on the table.
– Agnes Kripps, Canadian Socred, to the Speaker of the British Columbia legislature during a heated discussion on sexual terminology.

ON VISITS, INSIGHTFUL COMMENTS ON
I haven’t been to Michigan since the last time I was there.
– Attributed to Vice President Dan Quayle

Well, there’s a sampling. If, wherever you are, you pick up long-distance belly laughs, chuckles or hoots, you can surmise that I have picked up this book again.

Introduction To Musings XI

November/December 2000

HOLIDAY GREETINGS

Shakespeare has the Earl of Warwick say (Henry IV Part 2, Act III, Sc. 1):

“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the nature of the times deceas’d;
The which observ’d, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds
And weak beginnings lie intreasured.”

I make no claim whatsoever to have a “near aim of the chance of things.” No Red Sox fan would ever have the chutzpah to assert that. After the 2000 Presidential campaign, with its weird, unprecedented aftermath, I remembered that since I first voted in 1932, I have voted in the Presidential elections for the winner 10 or 11 times; and for the loser 7 or 8 times. I would never [have] amassed much of an estate betting on my choices. I guess I am one of those in the well-worn cliche, “often wrong, but never in doubt.”

My health is a little less robust than when I sent you Holiday Greetings in 1999. After all, in less than a year, I will be 90, if I make it. I agree with Robert Frost who said, “In three words I can sum up everything I learned about life. It goes on.” Amen to that.

Measuring The Past – Weighing The Future

January 2, 2000
Venice

(re-write of March 21, 1982, Lakeland)

Thirty-nine years ago the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association consolidated, and the Unitarian Universalist Association became a new religious name on the continental scene. Today, I would like to review briefly the values that each brought from an historic past – values which should not be erased – and re-affirm proposals and principles which seem to me essential to justify an on-going religious enterprise which asks for loyalty and support. We are justified if we are useful in service to the human family, courageous, and thoughtful in evaluating the conflicts and stresses in society, and aware of the need to provide situations where we celebrate life together – worship. No religious endeavor is worthy of the commitment it requires unless it serves persons in their needs, challenges society to create both larger liberties and stronger social cohesion, and deepens our human grasp of the importance of the great ideas: the nature of this creating universe, our purpose and destiny on this earth and the “source of human good.”

There were Universalists and Unitarians hundreds of years before the movements were organized on this continent. The associations and denominations were structures to unite congregations and to house and protect ideas which had previously existed as heresies within other religious frameworks.

That all humankind, without exception, was not condemned to everlasting Hell, but was to be saved, was a theological affirmation existing from earliest Christian times. In America, the early Universalist preachers were almost exclusively “Bible Universalists,” many of them self-taught. They rebutted the orthodox claims of Hell and damnation with proof texts from the Old and New Testaments which indicated clearly that many of the Old Testament prophets, and in the New Testament, Jesus, Paul, and others believed that the nature of God was love, and that eternal creating love, by its very nature, prohibited eternal damnation, even for one single human soul. Hosea Ballou, the pioneer Universalist preacher, was riding circuit, place to place, preaching Universalism. He stopped in homes overnight. Somewhere in New England he stopped overnight with a farmer who did not agree with him and they discussed Universalism. The farmer’s son was somewhat of a drunk and when he did not return from town, the farmer was worried. He was afraid his son would go to Hell. “All right,” said Ballou, “We’ll find a place on the path where your son will be coming home. We’ll build a big fire, grab him and throw him into it.” The farmer was shocked, “That’s my son, I love him, I can’t do that.”

“If you, a human and imperfect father, love your son so much you wouldn’t throw him into the fire, how can you possibly believe that God, the perfect father, would do so?”

It is fair to report that the orthodox opponents could find numerous biblical proof texts which seemed to buttress their position that a few souls would be saved by the grace of God. But most souls were destined for eternal punishment in Hell.

This demonstrates one can “prove” almost anything from scriptures. Those who advocate “scientific creationism” using the scriptures as laboratory proof that evolution is erroneous do not seem to recognize that by the same means, scripture, one can “prove” that the earth is flat. So it would seem consistent to me that a believer in “scientific creationism” should, logically, belong to the Flat Earth society.

In Christian beginnings, universal salvation was a doctrine defended by many of the early leaders of the Church. Even when it became a heretical doctrine, some five hundred years after Jesus lived, there were frequent re-assertions of the doctrine of universal salvation by courageous heretics.

In modern Universalism in America, there was Dr. George de Benneville. Influenced by the Universalism of some of the German pietists who were a small but influential wing of the Protestant Reformation, de Benneville was preaching Universalism in Pennsylvania in the 1740s. John Murray, disciple of James Relly, came to America. After the remarkable experiences of the New Jersey landing, he found his ways to New England. Much to his surprise, he found a Universalist group in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1770. We would call it a fellowship today. After a series of dramatic events, he became minister of the first organized society of Universalists in America, The Independent Christian Church.

The movement spread rapidly in New England and Pennsylvania, soon reaching out to gather societies in New York and Ohio. In 1805, Hosea Ballou’s famous TREATISE ON THE ATONEMENT was the theological proposal which made most Universalists unitarian (small u) in their theology years before Unitarianism became an organized movement.

Unitarianism has roots as deep or deeper in the soil of human history. The Hebrew scripture proclaimed a monotheism at least from the time of the ethical prophets, 800 years B.C.E. The New Testament offers no evidence of Trinitarian belief. Belief that God was three was a later development of Christian dogma.

Disbelief in the Trinity became heretical. While monotheism remained the foundation of Jewish and Moslem theology, the Christian Church punished those who deviated from the Trinitarian dogmas.

Nevertheless, Unitarian thought flared again and again. Servetus, most well-known of the anti-Trinitarians of the Reformation period, was burned at the stake by John Calvin in Geneva, but his influence was not destroyed thereby. In the same sixteenth-century, the Socinian or Unitarian movement was organized in Transylvania by Francis David. David, later imprisoned, died in jail, but Unitarianism has persisted in Hungary for more than four hundred years.

Unitarianism in England pre-dated the movement in America by almost a century. Under the leadership of Theophilus Lindsey and Joseph Priestley, organization was made effective in the founding of Essex Hall Chapel in 1774.

In the United States, although there were early Congregational preachers who were Unitarian in thought, specific organization was delayed.

King’s Chapel was the first Anglican (Episcopal) Church in Boston. However, in 1785, the membership elected a liberal minister, James Freeman. Importantly enough, when the Bishop would not approve Freeman and refused to ordain him, the Parish delegated its Senior Warden to ordain Freeman – a radical departure from and rejection of the Anglican/Episcopal practice of ordination by the Bishop through whose laying on of hands on the ordinand maintained the doctrine of apostolic succession.

The American Unitarian Association was formed in 1825. It was not a uniting of churches, but was an individual membership organization. The inspired preaching of William Ellery Charming and the Unitarian influence on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School were important in the founding of the AUA. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, among others, strengthened the intellectual position and increasingly isolated the Unitarian movement from the prevailing orthodoxies.

For more than a hundred years, the Universalists and Unitarians maintained their denominational separateness, each accumulating heroes, heroines, traditions, trusts and institutional habits which were difficult to alter or abandon. Recognizing, however, that their theology and social attitudes were developing along parallel lines, there were overtures toward merger as early as 1865.

Both denominations took pretty much in stride the revolutions in scientific ideas and adjusted theological positions to cohere with modern thought. Darwinian evolution, the higher criticism of the Bible, and Freudian theories of our motives and inwardness all were accepted generally by both denominations and were positions which helped liberals toward a better understanding of human nature in a world of natural and orderly processes.

[CJW note: Mainline religions stopped preaching hellfire & brimstone; reference to a cartoon which depicts a minister giving a sermon in which he declares, “No matter how badly you have sinned, you don’t have to worry about losing your coverage!”]

In the 1950s, deliberations about merger intensified and in progressive steps, studies were undertaken, and various merger proposal voted, which led to the conclusive vote in 1960. The negotiations had been complicated and there was opposition, but the consolidation was overwhelmingly approved by the delegates. At the time, some of us remembered the words of the prophet Amos, “Can two men (sic) walk together except they agree?” Unitarians and Universalists agreed that their religious association was one and to walk together henceforth.

It is important to remember the values of the old which have been preserved in the new:

First, there is the basic theological/philosophical tradition of individual freedom, reason, character, optimism . This right of individual belief is maintained specifically in the purposes and objectives of the UUA: “To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship.”

Second is the great Reformation affirmation of the priesthood of all believers. We make no division between the clergy and the laity that asserts or implies that the clergyman has a unique, sacred calling. We ministers are trained to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the ordained minister, but we have no wisdom from on high that is denied the person in the pew or chair. The freedom and responsibility of both pulpit and pew have both historical precedent and continuing symbol in our traditions, in the ordination in King’s Chapel of James Freeman by the Senior Warden, a layman and ordination of John Murray by the Gloucester Universalists – laypeople all.

The parallel institutional right of congregational independence was a high value in both Unitarian and Universalist traditions and it has been preserved in the constitutional documents of the UUA.

There are many traditions in our historical past which are points of referral and wise guidance, but the most vital are the freedom of the individual and the independence of the congregation.

What shall we dream and try to make real in the future? The future cannot be precisely determined by the conditions of the present. One of the mysterious, tantalizing, and hopeful features of this dynamic universe is that effects can never be exactly predicted from observable causes. Prediction of things to come is always a venture of chance. I do not happen to believe in crystal balls, tarot cards, or the daily astrological column.

But it seems to me that one of our responsibilities is theological. When one looks back on the “death and Glory” argument which badly split the Universalists in the 19th century, when one considers the agitation and hot debates in the humanism/theism controversy of a few decades ago, as well as other issues on which there was division, one must surely recognize that theological debate is seldom a placid encounter. As one historian has remarked, “there is no rancor like that between theological opponents who fight for the glory of God as if the very devil were in them.”

We do need a theological framework which provides a reasonable enclosure for the revolutionary changes which are occurring in electronic communications, science, politics, economics and government. The UUA has a program, “Building your own theology” which I recommend, if you have not already used it.

But we must be just as wary of establishing a creed as were our forbears. The fact that a religion may be appraised as modern is no warrant whatsoever for an attitude requiring conformity to it, or being arrogant about it. In the historical room of the Universalist Church in Gloucester, there hangs a replica of the original Charter of Compact of that first organized Universalist Church. If you ever visit there, read the whole compact, but particularly notice the 9th article: “whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one’s own religion is inestimable; and in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associated with us should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating him from difficulty and of enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution.” The language may be slightly archaic, but the ethic is as imperative today as then.

Universal salvation, among us, has become less a theological proposition for the after-life and more an article of faith for the people living in this world – to affirm, defend, and promote the worth of every human personality and the use of the democratic method in human relationships. This is the additional meaning, The Big Idea, that has been transfused into the grand old theology of the universal salvation of all humankind.

There is no blinking the requirement that our faith must be not only free, but also exacting, for the defense of all souls is no trivial or easy task. It is something we must do together. John Coleman Adams, one of the superior of our 19th century preachers, once said that “our forbears were too jealous of their liberties to cultivate their unities.”

The defense of the free mind requires a good deal of unity. We should be neither boastful of our knowledge nor extravagant in our claims of virtue. Even as a consolidated association, we are tiny compared with the millions other churches can count. Nevertheless, we need to exert our efforts, the ounces of our weight, toward achieving a world which will consider all persons on earth worthy of salvation here on earth, which will Define salvation in terms of enough to live on as well as freedom to choose a faith to live by.

We live in communities where there is a multiplicity of differing religions, denominations, associations with differing theologies, symbols, sacraments, rituals, traditions. What is most needed for the 21st century is not a unity of faith, as faith is commonly understood, but rather an urgent witness to stimulate and encourage all persons to live up to the ethical demands of their own religions. We do this best by living up to our own. In our own way and in cooperation with others whose faith symbols may differ widely, can deal with issues of human dignity, rights, freedom, hunger, sickness, and the search for the common good.

Religion In The Ruins

October 20, 1985
Lakeland

November 24, 1985
Port Charlotte

May 20, 2000
Musings

The expressions of religion are a series of contrasts and contradictions. Visits to some of England’s famous cathedrals and churches strengthened that belief. Thomas Jefferson wrote after visiting the cathedral at Milan, Italy, “a worthy object of philosophical contemplation to be placed among the rarest instances of the misuse of money.” (Malone, Vol II, p. 123) When one visits the cathedrals with their Gothic arches or is grasped by the beauty of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, thrusting 430 feet skyward above the impressive Gothic church, set amid the green beauty of the cathedral close, surely Jefferson was insensitive to the ways such beauty and architectural power can stir the deep dimensions of our wistful hopes.

Yet, these ancient religious centers of worship were built in times of human misery we can but dimly perceive in the world today. Beyond the kings, lords, dukes and their toadies and favorites, the mass of people’s lives were as someone wrote, “nasty, brutal, and short.” And, without hope of improving their lot in life.

Today these magnificent cathedrals and churches would be in ruins except for tourists. Nearly every cathedral I visited was in some process of expensive repair and maintenance. Scaffolding on towering spires, roped-off areas where a floor was being replaced, or shoring up crumbling pillars, etc.

Without exception, there was either an entrance fee or a voluntary collection box with signs indicating that £100,000 per year or £250,000 per year were necessary to maintain the cathedral or to prevent it from falling down. The busiest places were not the altars, but the postcard and gift shops. There, sales were brisk to visitors who, in Myles Kingston’s words, were “probably 90% agnostic in the nicest possible way.”

Therefore, in narrating some of contrasts and contradictions, my objective is not to be frivolous or demeaning to the religions of the people of the United Kingdom. Rather, the observations will lead to the question, what is essential in the experiences, rituals, and beliefs that gather under the large umbrella named “religion”?

One whimsical item I picked up ... reported “bats in the belfry, for generations, a hazardous peculiarity of church life in England, have brought work to an abrupt halt in Methodist chapel rafters in Ipplepen. The rare species of bat is protected by law. Pastor Kenneth Hext observed, ‘I had no idea we had bats up there. We have only seen one in the church before, and it was driven crazy by a group of children who were singing modern hymns.’” (RNS)

That English people participate very little in religious services has been known for a long time. Some observers thought that such lack of participation was a characteristic of life in the large urban centers, but that in the villages, people were still loyal to the parish church. However, a recent study suggests that Church of England in the countryside faces extinction. The report noted that “average church congregations numbered around 20, and in some cases a single individual joined the priest in worship. Only 6 services in the Deanery studied found more than 20 in the congregation, six had five or less; and nine had between six and ten .... 2/3 of the congregants were women, and almost 2/3rds over 60. There were no children or young people at 16 of 24 services visited by the surveyor.” (Christian Century, 10/2/85)

Another survey done by the Princeton Research Center (Gallup) produced an interesting divergence among Western nations. To the survey question, “Do you take some moments of prayer or meditation or contemplation or something like that,” the response in the United States was 86% yes, 14% no. Great Britain, 10th place, answered 50% yes, 50% no. (FREE INQUIRY, Fall 1985, p. 67).

To the question, “Do you find that you get comfort and strength from religion or not?”, the United States again was first, [with] 79% answering yes; 17% no, and 4% no opinion. Great Britain, 8th on the list, answered 46% yes, 49% no, and 5% don't know.

The simplest response is that the people of the United States are about twice as religious as the people of Great Britain. But as I shall attempt to develop later, the simplest answers can be wrong.

Three times I was present in churches when they were crowded with people – but the occasions were concerts, not religious services. Superb choirs and musicians rendered some of the great compositions of the English heritage – music inspired by the religious and music composed for royal occasions, such as coronations.

One might conclude that there is high interest in music and low interest in religion. But that's another conclusion that is both simple and wrong. For the corollary of such a conclusion is that music is religious only when it is an accessory to a mass, or prayers, or sermons. I, and many of you here, have been transported to realms beyond thought by Beethoven, or your favorite composer, without benefit of clergy or church. [CJW note: Beatles]

Attending Evensong in historic and impressive Salisbury Cathedral, a superior boy's choir provided a fine musical experience. Several Anglican priests intoned ritual sentences and read from the scriptures. But although thousands could have been comfortably seated in the nave, as there were only 25 or 30 people in addition to the choir and priests, all of us were seated in the choir. I'm sure too that most of the attendees were tourists like ourselves. I'm also sure that if at that time the boy's choir gave a concert without the Church of England ritual for Evensong, attendance would have [been] 10 times, even 20 times larger. Again, for the moment, no easy generalizations which could be quite wrong.

A few more impressions of contrasts and contradictions. After a stirring concert by the large, splendidly trained choral group of the Birmingham Symphony [CJW note: given in St. Mary's Church, Warwick], we wandered into the Memorial Chapel of the Dukes of Warwick. The sculpture and architecture were examples of ancient skill, devotion, and creativity. Central in the chapel was the tomb of Richard Beauchamp, his sculptured effigy on the tomb. His hands are folded gently; his carved face, tranquil.

Reflecting on this impressive monument, I would not help but think that this Richard Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, was the commander of English forces during that period in the Hundred Years War with France, when Joan of Arc made her brief, blazing, and still mysterious impact on history. When the Burgundians captured Joan, Warwick bought her from the Burgundians. The church put her on trial, found her guilty of heresy, turned her over to Warwick, and the English burned her at the stake.

Another instance – one of the readings was from the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. For hundreds of years after Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury killed in the cathedral, pilgrims made their way to Canterbury to offer gifts at the shrine of Thomas Becket, many of them hoping for miraculous cures, alleged sometimes to happen at his shrine.

When Henry VIII split from the Church of Rome, he dismantled the shrine of Thomas Becket, appropriating the vast wealth of gold and jewels which had accumulated through centuries of hopeful, worshiping pilgrims. As I stood by the simple marble memorial in the floor which marks the spot where Becket died, another contradiction crossed my mind.

Henry II, King of England, has been tagged as the villain who ordered his knights to assassinate Becket. Becket is a sainted, historical martyr. Even in modern times, the pilgrims arrive. Archbishop Temple (1821 – 1902) stated, “it is the bounded duty of every English-speaking man and woman to visit Canterbury at least twice in their lives.”

Yet, in historical perspective, Henry II was correct in his stand on the bitter dispute with Becket. Henry II was one of the English monarchs who fostered advances in the legal system, a legal system which is the foundation of our own. Henry II promoted the Constitutions of Clarendon, which would weaken the power of church courts. Up to then, if one was connected with the church, he was exempt from trial in the civil courts for criminal acts. They could be tried only in the church courts. Prelates, priests, clerks, musicians, even thousands of students who could recite a little Latin were exempt from trial in the civil courts.

Henry II wanted to abolish this “benefit of clergy,” as it was called, and Becket was adamantly opposed. Becket's death delayed the provisions of the Constitutions of Clarendon, but eventually they became law. Becket had the benefit of poetry, martyrdom, sainthood, and myth, including T. S. Eliot's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL. However, historically we are all better off because all persons are equally responsible to civil and criminal courts. But there is no pilgrim's shrine for Henry II.

I have talked of contrasts and contradictions and could refer to more. Although the references have been to England, a visitor to the U.S. could compile a long list of contrasts and contradictions. How would a visitor to Lakeland appraise organized religion if he visited us and did not visit First Assembly with its 10,000 seats? Or visit Orlando's First Baptist numbering 8,000 members with a new $16 million plant and not know about Friends' Meeting or First Unitarian? Or visit no churches but turn on the TV in the hotel room and be exposed to Oral Roberts, Ernest Angley, Jerry Falwell or Jimmy Swaggart? What generalizations would be valid?

All the experiences I have had to point to religion as an inner condition, not an external display, however sanctified by dogma and traditions. I value the externals of our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship:

The joy of our gatherings in friendship
The stimulation of our free and uninhibited dialogues and discussions
Our shared responsibilities for management, policies, and directions
Our mutual contributions of talents, ideas, music, convictions, and dividing of necessary chores.

But these I value because they cohere with the ongoing inner search for convictions that may make me both a better person than I am and a more useful citizen in the vast and complex world of which I am a part. In my better moments, I do not disparage those whose inner condition has different external expressions – the Mass, the creed, the evangelical convictions, the Torah. Expressions from the inner core radiate in different directions.

Similarly, if the organized expression of religion is dwindling in the U.K., – as all observations confirm – the English people are not going to pieces morally. There is politeness and cordiality to strangers; they are as much concerned about the lot of the poor and sick as we are, in some instances, more so. They, too, are aware of the perils of our divided world. Their art, music, and drama is creative and inspirational.

But as Emerson wrote, “If religion be the doing of all good, and for its sake the suffering of all evil, ... that divine secret has existed in England from the days of Alfred to those of Romilly, of Clarkson, and of Florence Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame.”

The externals of religion are always interesting, many times fascinating. But the inner condition of our minds and emotions, the goals we seek, the love we express, are the better part even when externals may fall into ruins.

The new Coventry Cathedral, built after the older one was bombed out in WWII, is an overwhelming experience of art, modern architecture, and stained glass. One feels a universal spirit of triumph after disaster, of hope over despair.

If you can visit only one cathedral in England, my advice is: pass up the old ones and experience Coventry.

Among other aesthetic treasures in the nave is a modern metal sculpture, “The Plumb Line and City,” a gift from an American church and created by Clark Fitzgerald, an artist from Maine. The scriptural reference is to the ethical prophet, Amos, who has a vision of the Lord holding a plumb line. The plumb line tells the carpenter whether the work in progress is true and square.

When religion as an inner condition guides or pushes a person to be truer to self and square with others, other externals are much less important.