Category Archives: Past as Prologue to Future

The Neighborhood

Do you live in a neighborhood? A block or two or three where you know the neighbors’ names, perhaps even some of their interests?

A long time ago, before I was old enough to even attend school, I remember when neighbors would come over to visit after supper. We lived in an older suburb, and in the hot summer, the adults sat on porch chairs and talked. I listened, perched on a step. In colder weather, they gathered in our living room, and I listened, sprawled on the floor, next to my mom’s chair.

I don’t have a lot of memory of what they talked about—possibly about current events, like what the Soviets were doing in Europe. Or maybe they talked about elections or the growing student population in the local elementary school. Maybe they argued—surely they had different opinions about the world—but I remember the atmosphere as being collegial and—well, neighborly.

After a few years, the neighborly chats stopped. Not because of any disagreements or bad feelings. They stopped because people began staying home to watch the new invention called television.

Maybe portable phones and other electronic devices have merely increased what is inevitable. We’re able to do more and more without leaving home or taking time for personal contact with actual people. Banking, communicating, entertainment—we do all these activities more often without leaving our homes.

Certainly, Americans without good jobs may live in crowded conditions—or even on the street—but typical middle class Americans live less and less with families or friends. Yes, some of us do have active social lives, but families are smaller, less of us are involved in the local school, the children tend to leave while still in their teens, and more of us live alone. Even our communication tends to be impersonal—often over the computer. And actual visits to neighbors become rare for many of us.

It’s supposed to be an advantage to take care of banking and bills and other transactions from the comfort of our homes. But it means we meet less and less with others even when performing these chores.

What spaces are left for humans to actually meet in person? Some of us still work in offices or visit shopping centers. Children still need teachers. Political meetings may include in person attendance—but often include electronic attendees as well. Those of us attending religious services may still be more likely to do so in person, although the Covid pandemic increased meetings via the internet.

It’s perfectly all right, of course, to seek ways to “save” time. Busy parents, often working, need all the help they can get to have time for their families.

Nevertheless, the idea of neighborhood has become, for many of us, a foreign concept.

My Country Right or Wrong?

My father was a fan of Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain during World War II. I have written in a previous blog about the call my parents received on December 7, 1941, from a neighbor informing them of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack led to the U.S. entering World II immediately on the side of Britain and other allies.

We may forget how shocking was that attack and the fear that the United States might lose this war with the Nazis and their allies. My mother later recounted my family’s experiences in dealing with wartime life: how she hoarded gasoline, sold only with the use of carefully regulated coupons, as she rode one way up the main shopping highway and back down the other in one trip. No short trips for just one item or shopping in only one place at a time. She saved cans and newspapers for the drives which recycled them for war use.

The British, of course, having been attacked earlier and watching France fall, across the narrow strip of the English Channel, were obviously in even more danger of losing the war.

They did not lose, and surely one reason was the absolute resolve of Winston Churchill that they would not. His refusal to even consider surrender, fought with stirring speeches to the British parliament, was as brave an act as any in history.

However, societies involved in great conflicts almost always find it impossible to return to past ways once the conflict is over, even if they win.

Churchill was never as popular after the war. His strong belief in the continuance of the British Empire was at odds with the new world risen from the ashes of the conflicts in Europe and Asia. Native citizens would, time and again, gain release from their colonialist overlords by war or by the reluctant understanding of the colonizers that the time of empire was over.

Churchill, brave as any wartime leader in history, did not understand that even the British Empire was not ordained to last forever.

Much earlier in his life, Churchill had taken a speaking tour of the United States and met “an aging Mark Twain.” They discussed the Boer War, fought between the British Empire and South Africa. As described in The Economist (December 23, 2023, “From Prisoner to Prime Minister”), the conversation went as follows, Churchill remembering: ‘Of course we argued about the Boer war. After some interchanges I found myself beaten back to the citadel. ‘My country right or wrong.’ ‘Ah,’ said the old gentleman, ‘when the poor country is fighting for its life, I agree. But this was not your case.’”

America is still my country even when it errs, but I am not called to worship it as a god. Some of the greatest patriots are those who, like ones who opposed the U.S. entry into Vietnam, practice great patriotism when they rightly fault the country for its sins.

Missing the Holy Land

I worked for much of my U.S. Foreign Service career in north Africa and the Middle East. However, I was never able to visit Israel, even though many places in that country are memorable reminders of my Christian heritage.

At that time, visiting Israel from a Muslim-majority country was difficult. It would have meant making a special trip to one of the few countries allowing me to receive the visa I needed. I never got around to doing that. So, I regret to say, I never visited or “walked where Jesus walked.”

The Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on innocent civilians, striking unexpectedly in recent days, have shocked us by their cruelty. Israel’s tourism may suffer, but that, no doubt, is far less a priority for Israel than deciding on their response to the attacks.

We wait as responses work themselves out. Of course we expect responses, as we expected the United States to respond to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Only the terrorists and their supporters would deny Israel the right to respond, but what kind of response? How can Israel fight terrorists without harming civilians, including innocent children? Without stoking more calls for hatred?

Thomas L. Friedman, an opinion columnist for The New York Times suggests that a sometimes overlooked partner for Israel in dealing with Palestinians is the Palestinian Authority, a more moderate group. (“Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than in This Moment,” New York Times, October 10, 2023)

The Palestinian Authority is autocratic and appears at a low ebb in popularity with Palestinians. Nevertheless, in such a time of hatred and suffering, any possible breakthrough should be explored.

Response is vital, but we must work for a just response. Hatred is such an easy choice, but it only fuels more hatred.

Children of Slaves and Slave Owners

In a small town in Georgia, a white mother of three found that her white ancestors had enslaved the ancestors of a black couple, close friends of hers. She was understandably upset. (The story is told in “Living Reconciliation” (Christianity Today, July/August 2023.)

The black husband, a minister, spoke a prayer over his white friend, asking God to break the chain of generational racism. The three led efforts at racial reconciliation in the community.

Years later, a local historian’s genealogical research indicated that the two families were related by blood. An ancestor of the white woman was one of the black slaves. The black woman who had descended from the wronged slave called her white friend to ensure her that it didn’t change the love she had for her.

I was reminded of my own finding years ago that one of my ancestors had owned at least one slave. Whether my ancestor further abused the slave and fathered a child is not recorded. I hope not, but, regardless, I’m not proud of my ancestor’s choice to own a slave.

That ancestor later died in a federal prison camp of pneumonia. He had fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and was captured. His death was attributed to illness caused by poor health care. Apparently, rations for the southern prisoners were cut in protest against the substandard treatment of federal prisoners in southern internment camps.

So much evil, including hatred and a horrible war, grew out of that early choice to own human beings as slaves. What recompense can we offer for that great sin, present from the beginning of America?

White Americans can begin with repentance and a refusal to those who would lull us by telling us “it was a long time ago” and “we need to move on.” The results remain with us today in a legacy of segregation, not seriously contested until the latter part of the twentieth century.

American school children need to know their history, all of it, warts and all. The purpose is not to induce a guilt complex. Our children are not guilty of the sins of past Americans. Indeed, some are the children of recently arrived immigrants. The purpose is to understand how easy is the temptation to do terrible wrong for a spur of the moment “benefit.” We have paid for the cheap labor of slaves many times over.

How to End a War

Writing about Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Margaret MacMillan, an Oxford professor, compares it to the beginning of World War I: “In 1914 and 2022 alike, those who assumed war wasn’t possible were wrong.” (“How Wars Don’t End,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2023)

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, she points out, had made clear his belief that Ukraine was historically a part of Russia. He apparently assumed he could easily conquer it and incorporate it into Russia. Similarly, leaders of Europe in 1914 assumed “war was a reasonable option” and began taking sides when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist.

European leaders at the time assumed that any war would be short. Few envisioned the years long slog in muddy trenches and the slaughter of thousands of young men.

Europe, of course, had fought wars for centuries. Indeed, World War I was sometimes seen as merely another war to settle scores left by the German victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

Wounded pride also played its part in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin was a Russian intelligence officer in East Germany and witnessed the Soviet Union’s loss there, as the Cold War receded and Germany reunited as a democracy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is, in a sense, an as yet unfinished part of the Cold War.

When Ukraine’s war with Russia ends, as it eventually will, MacMillan suggests using the ending of World War II as a better example to follow than that of World War I. “In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Marshall Plan helped rebuild the countries of western Europe into flourishing economies and, equally important, stable democracies. . . . Even former enemies can be transformed into close partners.”

It seems the idea is not to defeat enemies but turn them into partners.

 

A Republic If You Can Keep It

“Well, is it a republic?” was the question a bystander supposedly asked Benjamin Franklin after the Constitutional Convention in 1787. What form of government had been decided by these meetings, the person wanted to know, now that the colonies had gained independence from Great Britain?

Franklin is reported to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It wasn’t a sure thing for those few colonies mostly on the Atlantic seaboard, wilderness throughout much of the interior. After all, only white men who tended to be well-off could even vote. It wasn’t exactly a country with a sterling history, either—much of the land was taken from native Americans. And it would be almost a century, following a bloody civil war, before slaves were emancipated, and a century or so more until real progress was made in giving all Americans, regardless of color, anything approaching equality.

Any group of people will have differences. No one agrees totally with another person. The problem is not so much the differences. It’s that too many of us assume that some of us can actually know what perfect truth is. Yet, as history from early civilization to today’s current events show us: no one of us knows absolute truth.

Many of our current differences are deep—what we should or should not teach in our schools, who can be married, who can terminate a pregnancy. The issues cannot be solved by tossing a coin. We must debate, decide, and accept that we will lose some of the time.

Figuring out reasonable solutions—not “right” solutions—will be a continuing, messy process. Some will lose and believe the loss was incalculable. Some of the time it may be. No person or country will get it right all the time. For the system to work, we have to recognize the impossibility of human perfection.

We have to learn to live peaceably and reasonably in an imperfect society. We should have the freedom to peaceably challenge the current package—indeed, we should have that freedom because it’s always going to need more tinkering. However, we do not have the right to hate or to demean someone because we think they are dead wrong. Sometimes they will be—but sometimes we will be, too.

Humility? A recognition of the imperfection of every one of us? We could start there.

“Up Close” in the Soviet Union

“Up Close with American Exhibit Guides to the Soviet Union 1959-1991,” traces an American cultural adventure in what seems an almost bygone age. (The Foreign Service Journal, May 2023)

The Soviet Union allowed the United States Information Agency (USIA) to set up cultural exhibits in various Soviet cities. The exhibits were staffed by Russian-speaking American young people. They answered questions by Russian citizens, most of whom at the time had little or no access to media not controlled by their government.

Two visitors were Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who engaged in their famous “kitchen debate” in 1959.

The exhibits included examples of “American ingenuity, technology, and daily life—from graphic arts, photography, and agriculture to outdoor recreation, technology for the home, and medicine.” Visitors to the exhibits included a broad swath of Soviet people.

The American young people profited from their experience as guides. “Many went on to careers in diplomacy, business, law, academia, and the arts where their language skills and overseas experience were a plus.”

John Beyrle, one of the American guides, later joined the U.S. Foreign Service. His long career included an assignment as ambassador to Russia.

He wrote: “What we learned from the exhibits program, and what I think is still relevant to today’s Russia, is that people’s desire for the truth grows in direct proportion to the extent to which the truth is denied them. We need to offer our strongest support for the hundreds of thousands of Russians who now live in exile outside Russia . . . who seek a different future for their country, and have both the skill and the will to ensure that the truth continues to reach the largest number of people inside Russia as possible.”

Free to Worship as I Please

The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution proclaims: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .”

This freedom from government interference may be the main reason religious institutions have flourished in the United States. We can choose our religious preferences or not, as we think best. Religious institutions are maintained by people who believe in them. They wither and die if they no longer are seen to meet needs.

John Leland, a Baptist minister in 1802, called an established religion “spiritual tyranny—the worst of despotism. It is turnpiking the way to heaven by human law, in order to establish ministerial gates to collect toll. It converts religion into a principle of state policy, and the gospel into merchandise.” (Quoted by Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood, “A Danger to the Church,” Sojo.net, January 2023.)

Freedom of religion reaps other dividends. The first responders against slavery, racial injustice, poverty, war, and other injustices have tended to come from religious leaders. They often operate as our conscience.

Freedom of religion, it turns out, is more likely to promote lively religion.

Finding the Lost Continent

“Violent conflict exists in 20 African countries, and potential upsets in others cannot be ruled out. The violent activities of extremist groups are spreading.”

So wrote Mark G. Wentling, a retired diplomat (“Much Cause for Worry; A Clear-eyed Look at Africa,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2022.) Wentling spent most of his career working in aid programs for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID.)

At one point, back in the 1970’s, when Wentling began his work in Africa, the future seemed hopeful. Many countries were gaining their independence from colonial rulers. Today, writes Wentling, “It is difficult to find an African country where competent and honest governance prevails and where justice is rendered to the people.”

Wentling details numerous areas of concern: population growth that has not made the transition the rest of the world has made toward sustainable birth rates; a massive movement of the population into cities without historical parallel; low educational and health standards; and an agricultural system unable to meet the continent’s food needs.

Of course, since the Portuguese first explored Africa’s coastal areas, too many developed countries have seen Africa as merely a treasure for them to exploit, beginning with slavery and extending to its mineral and natural wealth. Except for the work of a few missionary and aid organizations, Africans were not given the freedom or the means to make the transition taken earlier by today’s developed nations.

Wentling ends his article on a pessimistic note: “It seems few Americans care about Africa. I care, but I am helpless to change the course of history. I can see that if the negative trends of this large and diverse continent of more than 2,000 ethnic groups are not reversed, there is much cause for worry.”

These words do not have to be the epitaph on a continent with such possibilities. Some have seen the possibilities and determined different courses. They include two past presidents, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. African writers also are more prevalent, bringing their stories to Western readers.

Perhaps what is needed now is more awareness, not only of Africa’s needs, but also of her gifts, of how revolutionary Africans would be if her young people were given the educational and vocational training they need.

Perhaps if we centered on encouraging the skills, both educational and vocational, for ordinary Africans, the people themselves would be able to change their governments and protect their vast resources.

We Have Never Been a Christian Nation

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .” (First Amendment to the United States Constitution)

We Americans tend to forget how revolutionary was the founding of our nation without a state religion. So long as a religion does no obvious harm, it has usually been acceptable for a group of Americans, large or small, to practice it. Certainly groups have been persecuted, but the U.S. government is forbidden by the Constitution to favor any religion.

Nevertheless, the majority of Americans until the beginning of the post World War II years probably thought of America as “Christian.” Other groups existed, of course. Some followed Judaism or were even (usually quietly) agnostics or atheists. However, the culture, most supposed, was “Christian.”

Leave aside the fact of our failing to act as Christians in practices like slavery and our relations with the area’s original inhabitants. The point is that we were, the majority would have said, a Christian nation. That was the fallback position.

However, the United States was a young nation with plentiful land and opportunities and freedoms unavailable in many parts of the world. Immigrants flocked here. Countries suffering hardships from war and dictators sent wave after wave of immigrants to this country.

Roman Catholic numbers grew steadily. Jewish immigrants increased. Russians came and also Asian immigrants. More Hispanics arrived from south of the border, joined by smaller groups of Haitians.

The latest immigrants have included Muslims escaping wars in the Middle East and most recently the collapse of Afghanistan.

As each group is joined by others, diluting and diluting again the former immigrant mix, some of those already established in the United States tend to resent the newcomers. These new people are different, not like our ancestors, not truly American. Of course, unless you count the original inhabitants, we’re all interlopers or descendants of such.

Each established group is tempted to believe that they are true Americans, not the newcomers with different religions and styles of clothing.

We have made many mistakes in our attempts to make the world in our image. That is not what this essay addresses. Nor does it address the need for a sane immigration policy with proper safeguards for both would be immigrants and the country they flock towards.

What should be understood, however, is that American Christians must give up the idea that America has ever been a “Christian” nation. A nation can be influenced by certain faiths, but it can never be “Christian.”

Christians, it is supposed, worship Jesus Christ. To try to make America in some way an example of a “Christian” nation is to defeat the religion of the Jewish teacher who chose to enter Jerusalem on a donkey, not striding in on the prancing steed of a conqueror. He did not worship power politics nor should we.

Beyond the Unborn

Since the Supreme Court decision dismantled Roe vs. Wade, much of our attention has centered on abortion. Perhaps the more important concern should be: Why do we have so many unwanted pregnancies in the first place?

We have more ways to prevent the conception of a child than ever before in history. Why are so many unwanted children conceived?

At some point in our recent history, conception became disconnected from family. Perhaps some of the disconnect began with the industrial revolution and the beginning separation between family and livelihood. Homes were located further from jobs and sometimes from older family members as well.

As the industrial revolution played out, suburbs grew and became havens for nuclear families. Fathers were gone all day as children separated according to age into larger and larger schools. Eventually, women looked for lives with meaning beyond increasingly lonely suburbs.

Much has been written about the exodus of women from the home, but men left first. In addition, the location of homes further and further from work stole valuable time from families.

Women, denied the part they had always played in the economic sphere on farms and in family businesses, began to leave the children in school and head for jobs in the city. Some suburbs emptied out during the day.

The reign of the nuclear family was followed by the rise of the single household dweller. More single folks set up their own households. Eventually, just as the nuclear family eclipsed the extended family, the single householder began to overtake the nuclear family.

Singles searched out other singles for the “family” no longer a part of their lives or not easily available. Children were conceived as a byproduct, not as part of a family’s ongoing. The responsibility for bringing life into the world was too often ignored by young people who didn’t take responsibility for the life that might be produced by their coming together.

A greater need for families does not ignore the fact that not all families are ideal. Some are, in fact, harmful. Women also were too often abused within a male-dominant culture. Nevertheless, nothing has replaced the need for families. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and relatives are vital for nurturing. If humans are to survive, they need the caring provided only by families.

Conception separate from family bypasses both wisdom and responsibility. The best fix for abortion is the conception only of wanted children.

Reading Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton, an eighteenth century refugee to America from the West Indies, served as a young aide to General George Washington in the Revolutionary War. He served his adopted country again as President Washington’s first treasury secretary.

After reading Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, I realize how much we owe Hamilton for the financial structure he laid out in our nation’s beginning years. However, I was most struck by the nation’s titanic political battles during those years and our continuing struggles into our present day.

Indeed, we have fought over our nation’s directions and choices for its entire existence. We fought Great Britain to gain our political freedom, yet many of our founding fathers owned slaves with no freedom. Great Britain abolished slavery in most of her empire a few decades after the American Revolution, while its former colony, having won the struggle for independence, would not give up slavery for almost another century.

We have struggled over racism and women’s rights. We struggled over the power of monied interests to bribe politicians. We have struggled for a civil service uninfluenced by those interests. We have struggled over the use of our military power and our influence in the world.

Our discovery of the internet and social media have increased ways to share news and ideas, but the struggles evidenced in our tweets mirror the old battles between selfishness and service. Demagogues take advantage of those frightened by changes, as they always have, encouraging an us/them mentality.

Overcoming the never ending dangers to the republic bequeathed to us by Washington and Hamilton is a constant struggle. We will always struggle; that’s the price of choice by fallible humans.

The issue is whether we can disagree without hatred. It depends as much as anything else on our ability to sympathize with those with whom we disagree. As long as we respect each other, we can work for solutions.

Meditation on the Sixties

The other night, the hot weather kept me awake, so I got up and played a few oldies by Peter, Paul, and Mary. I sometimes call up other sixties singers as well.

Some of us remember those days of protests and the earth days. The protesters and others of us who sympathized really thought we were going to change things. We were inaugurating a new era of racial justice and protection of the earth.

Same song, second verse. We are, it appears, really beginning to burn up the planet. Racial justice issues continue to surface, too, and we’ve also got protestors who came close to toppling our electoral system of government in the United States. Not to mention echoes of the Cold War in Europe and Asia.

I think some of the blame must go to an us/them temptation. We are the good guys, and those on the other side are the bad guys. Listen to the old protest songs: we’re coming for you, don’t stand in the school doorway, etc.

Maybe this time around we could protest a little less and talk with each other a little more. Abortion? Can we move the “mother’s-rights-vs-baby’s-rights” debate toward helping women and men not create babies they don’t want in the first place?

We also need resources to help the mentally ill tame their demons. (Perhaps we could tax the rich a bit more for the resources we need. After all, children of the rich also suffer mental illness, not to mention harmful drug use. We could at least find money for equal treatment, regardless of income level.)

How about allowing parents the time to parent?

How can we overcome the ungodly desire for money that fuels the drug trade?

Finally, we could seek to understand, even share feelings, instead of demonizing those we disagree with.

A “Christian” Nation?

Throughout the centuries since Jesus of Nazareth lived on earth, Christians have wandered between the hardships of persecution and the temptations of power.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day spurned his teachings. As Christians increased in number, the secular Roman powers grew alarmed at their growth. They feared that the teachings of this Jesus might lead to insurrection, so they persecuted early Christians but were unsuccessful in stopping their growth.

In time, Christianity’s spiritual power overwhelmed both the secular and religious powers. Jesus’ followers then had to deal with the temptation to forge a political kingdom. Indeed, from the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry, some had attempted to make him a political leader. However, he refused temptations to be a king.

The fight to overcome the temptations of power has emerged whenever Christians have gained favor. The struggle resurfaced in the United States when an antiquated electoral system put in the White House an irreligious president never popular with a majority of Americans. To assure that he remained in power, he used U.S. Supreme Court appointments to curry favor with Christians.

What has resulted is a Christian movement gaining political power but losing in numbers and moral power.

Jesus refused to gain power through political means. When Christians have fallen prey to the temptation to do so, Christianity is weakened.

Working Out Working and Home

Several decades ago, I lived for a while in a small town in north Georgia, a mill town in years past. As in many such towns, most of the jobs had moved elsewhere, often to other countries. Fortunately, the town was close enough to Atlanta to experience growth from that urban area, offsetting loss of mill jobs. In fact, the mill village that had housed former workers was seeing some revitalization as a cluster of both historic and affordable housing.

When the mills first came to the town, the mill housing was not as separated from the jobs and commercial sections as in later suburban housing in larger cities. Nationally, this newer separation of work and housing became more pronounced after World War II. Many Americans bought houses in suburbs away from city centers, commuting in then affordable automobiles using cheap gas.

Rising costs of commuting as well as the Covid pandemic may have changed these housing patterns, at least temporarily. First came “the great resignation.” Secondly, some workers who were able to work from home via their computers have resisted a return to pre pandemic work customs.

Some workers resigned because of difficulties in finding child care when the pandemic was spreading. Another reason for resignation appears to be a new level of job dissatisfaction with commuting. A surprising number of workers have resisted returning to the old nine-to-five office presence once the pandemic became more manageable.

For several centuries, we in the western world have accepted increasing separation of home and work. Factories, then offices, became the standard place of work. Cities became employment centers while workers lived elsewhere, increasingly in suburbs, increasingly further from city centers.

Throughout recorded history, however, until the industrial revolution, work and home were physically close. Will the work/job separation caused by the industrial revolution continue or will computers now make possible workers returning to more historic norms?

Letting the Other Side Win

Carl Bernstein, the author, along with Bob Woodward, of All the President’s Men, has written an account of his earlier days as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. In his recent book, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recounts events he covered in the Kennedy/Johnson presidencies, beginning when he was in his teens.

When reading about the scandals, tragedies, and major political events of the 1960’s, I was struck by a sense of dé·jà vu with some of today’s events

Bernstein described a campaign rally in Maryland for George Wallace, running for president in 1968: “It was the first time I’d seen a demagogue inflame the emotions of American citizens who I’d thought were familiar to me.”

His reporting on the Wallace rally included a description of a group led by someone waving a Confederate battle flag. “When the bedlam subsided, he [Wallace] repeated his boilerplate speech about federal encroachments on states’ rights and his opposition to the civil rights bill, saying it would mean death to labor unions and private property.” Later in the speech, Wallace told the crowd, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

The anger that spurred rioters on January 6, 2021, to attack the capitol is related, it seems to me, to the same emotions spurring those Wallace supporters. It also was evident in the 2017 riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in the death of a protester.

Again and again, we have difficulty allowing the political process to play out when the process brings in changes we don’t like. That difficulty ignited falsehoods about stolen elections in 2020, leading finally to those January 6 riots.

The final test of democratic rule is allowing the other side to win.

Glory Days: Cold War’s End

In December, 1990, a young U.S. diplomat was serving at the U.S. consulate in what was then Leningrad, in the former Soviet Union. He took a trip into the neighboring country of Latvia. The diplomat, George Krol, wanted to visit the Latvian officials who had recently declared independence from the Soviet Union.

Following the astonishing revolts that year against Soviet rule in various Soviet republics, Latvia was among several former republics declaring their independence.

However, even as Krol was visiting, the celebration was cut short. News arrived that a coup of former Soviet communists against Russian President Boris Yeltsin was intent on restoring the Soviet Union. Word spread that Russian tanks were even on their way to Latvia to restore Soviet rule.

As Latvian leaders thanked Krol for being with them at this dangerous moment, Krol realized what it meant to represent America: “To them, I was not George Krol, a young American diplomat from New Jersey, I was America; and America was standing with them in their darkest hour. . . . I thought: I represent the United States of America; I can’t believe they pay me to do this.”

Today, as Ukraine fights back against Russian power in a struggle that was supposed to have ended over thirty years ago, we might revisit what that America is called to be.

May God help us overcome the hatreds that work against what we are supposed to be and what the world has such need of.

Another Mass Murder of Innocents: Thoughts

For a day or so after the mass murder of innocent children and two adults in a school in Texas, I refused to look at the news. I could not process or live with it. This current horror had followed the murder only a few days before of supermarket shoppers, and I wondered if the country had reached a place too low to climb out of.

Finally I steeled myself and read the reports, accepting that I could never be part of overcoming these horrors if I let despair win. To identify with the victims, I had to own them, had to know them as best I could.

Coupled with my dealing with the awful tragedy were other thoughts brought on by reading a thoughtful book by the late Richard Twiss, a native American, One Church Many Tribes.

How does allegiance to a nation compare with allegiance to God?

My generation basked in the afterglow of defeating the Nazi powers and of defending against godless communism. We found it easy to merge religion (majority Christian) and country.

Many of us came to think of America as a sort of “God’s country.” For those Americans able to vote and live in new suburbs, America meant white America. We forgot about our genocide against native Americans or our enslavement of blacks or our racism.

Amazing today that some who call for defending America against immigrants are themselves descendants of immigrants who invaded and stole land from original inhabitants. By condemning immigrants, they are condemning their own ancestors.

So far as I know, I and all my American relatives are descended from those who came to this country from various nations in Europe before the American Revolution. They were part of white people who settled on land originally belonging to native Americans. At least one of my direct ancestors owned slaves.

Of course, two of my ancestors patriotically fought in Europe in two world wars, one suffering for years from post traumatic stress.

As far as I know, all of my ancestors professed the Christian religion, as do I.

In looking back at this history of my family, I admire many of their qualities—for raising children to love God and to be good neighbors in their communities, to give time and money to worthy causes. I find little evidence of any who worshiped wealth.

However, I am called to repent of their and my sins for a sometimes superior attitude. It easily assumed no responsibility for racism and drew a line against which no non-white should cross.

I condemn but, because of beliefs I myself have flirted with, must assume some responsibility for those who, on January 6, 2021, decided to override democratic norms by storming the Capitol in a rebellion against our constitutional processes.

I condemn, but will not hate, those who are so concerned about an America turning less white that they will swallow obvious lies about an election, an election whose proven results do not agree with what they wanted.

I, like other white Americans, have been part of an America who worships guns instead of God. I must bear some responsibility for the unbelievable killing and suffering that takes place with those guns we refuse to control.

Perhaps the killing of innocents and our refusal to regulate the guns used in their killing are a part of our worship of power. We prefer this false worship rather than living out the justice and mercy preached by the Jesus many of us profess to follow.

Religious Freedom and Religious Belief

Few practices weaken the message of Jesus more than allowing his followers the power to force their beliefs on others.

During the Middle Ages, as the political power of the church increased, its moral power and the respect for its teachings decreased. The established church too often became a power broker in various political rivalries leading to war and suffering.

The founders of the United States, no doubt learning from the religious wars endured by many of their immediate ancestors, included freedom of religion as an unmistakable principle in their founding document, boldly enshrined in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As political scientist Francis Fukuyama writes: “But respect for autonomy was meant to manage and moderate the competition of deeply held beliefs, not to displace those beliefs in their entirety.” (“A Country of Their Own; Liberalism Needs the Nation,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2022)

Though the early U.S. included dedicated Christians, many Americans calling themselves Christians probably meant it in a cultural sense only.

As education and cities increased, American Christianity deepened. Christian movements thrived in an atmosphere where no adult was forced into an established religion and where Christians competed for the hearts and minds of citizens. Movements included anti-slavery groups, temperance organizations, missionary societies, and those working among the poor. Christians grew in number in the United States and in the world.

Then two world wars, a cold war, and the growth of terrorism led to a worldwide displacement of suffering people. Many Christian-raised Americans examined the depth of a “Christian” country whose good works had nevertheless allowed slavery, racism, and domination by the pursuit of money.

The idea of returning to a mythical American past is a chasing after phantoms. Writes Fukuyama: “Some American conservatives hope to return to an imagined time when virtually everyone in the United States was Christian.”

The word “imagined” is important. America has never been “Christian.” The best times for Christians in the United States have always been when a few people, dedicated to the practices exemplified by Jesus, have attempted to live out his example.

Wealth and Taxes

Communism as practiced by Stalin and early leaders of the Soviet Union included forcibly taking land away from owners to be run by collectives. Ukraine, now again in Soviet cross hairs, was a victim of Stalin’s ruthlessness.

For centuries, however, the problem of poverty next to great wealth was part of unrest and rebellion in many parts of the world, from peasant revolts in China to the French Revolution.

Both Hebrew and Christian scriptures allow wealth. The scriptures are filled with feasts and celebrations, often a product of wealth. The problem is not wealth—indeed wealth is seen as a blessing. The problem with wealth is the same as with many other blessings—musical ability, beauty, political success, for example. The problem is the hoarding or use of blessings for oneself alone.

Every so often, according to Hebrew scriptures, wealth is to be curtailed, with part of it returned to original owners or their descendants. Wealth is allowed and to be enjoyed, but within limits.

The problem is not the enjoyment of wealth but the hoarding of wealth. Wealth is to be both enjoyed and shared.

We might look at our taxation as a modern day version of scriptural righteousness. The rich should be allowed the use of their wealth for their own enjoyment, but a responsible portion of it should be taxed for the use of all—schools, child care, low income housing, medical care, and other uses that benefit all of us.