Category Archives: Past as Prologue to Future

Growing Up Is Always

Organized Christianity since its inception could rate an A or an F, depending on which bits you examine.

One could point to religious wars killing millions.

On the other hand, where Christians have become a force, slavery generally has been abolished. The status of women has improved. The sick and the poor are more often cared for.

Jesus himself said to judge his followers not by whether they say they are his followers. Rather, have well do they follow his examples? Do they feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, take care of strangers, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoners?

Bill McKibben in his column in Sojourners (“A Mad and Dangerous Spell,” July 2021) faults those evangelicals who talk of the power of God to keep them from harm from the Covid-19 virus. For this reason, they say, they don’t need to be vaccinated against the disease.

“These sentiments sound pious,” he writes, “but they’re in fact the opposite—individualism masquerading as faith. God gave us a world that works in certain physical ways, and God gave us the brains to understand it.” Science developed the vaccines that have saved countless lives from Covid.

Against the anti-science of some evangelicals and others today, one must point to the books and learning kept alive in Christian communities during the European Middle Ages.

Ignorance is always being pushed back, for Christians as for anyone. Some of the first Christians owned slaves. Women were often placed in inferior positions. Some Christians (or calling themselves Christians) murdered each other and non-Christians in vicious wars and pogroms and crusades.

But change came. And Christians often led the changes, even against co-religionists.

The apostle Peter had to overcome his prejudice against Gentiles becoming Christians. In every generation since, we fight these battles to grow and overcome. We are always children striving to become the adults God wishes us to be.

Jesus and the Disinherited

Howard Thurman’s book, Jesus and the Disinherited, let me peer into the racial sins we Americans have inherited, as no other book has done.

I was raised a white Southerner by parents and church and culture which was not overtly racist. Ours wasn’t the Ku Klux Clan kind of racism. We were a working class/lower middle class church in a similar kind of neighborhood. I will be forever grateful to that church and its love.

It was only in reading Thurman’s book that I began to understand the less violent kinds of racism. Thurman helped me understand how a black in America, particularly in the South, had to live.

He talked of a visit he made to India. His host, as they prepared for bed, told him he must be careful at night if he got up to go to the bathroom or for any reason. He must always shine a light ahead so that he would not inadvertently step on a Cobra, curled soundlessly in his path.

And that is when I began to understand the insidiousness of racism.

I never had to think, when I left my house, about my white skin. I never considered, as I went into a store or applied for a job, how my white skin might be noticed.

In a white majority society, Thurman showed me, a person with a dark skin has to be aware of it all the time.

Christianity as Default

Christianity is alive and well, but Christendom is not. In the former places of Christendom, many regard it as somewhere between a harmless superstition and a deadly virus.

Christianity bested paganism as the default European religion in the latter days of the Roman Empire. It has endured centuries of peaks and declines since then as it spread throughout the planet, in one form or another.

But Christ is never fully realized in any society. When Christianity is lived by enough of its adherents as it should be, it gains followers and popularity and influence. Then people begin to think they are Christians by default because of the culture they were born into.

But of course, they are not. “Even when Christianity is the default mode of a society, Christ is not.” Christian Wiman writes in My Bright Escape.

Living the Christ faith is never by default. Christ must be chosen deliberately, new in each generation.

World War II Hangover

One of the greatest things the United States ever did was lead Europe to defeat the Nazis in World War II.

Even greater was leading the world against Soviet communism without a major war that would have destroyed the planet.

We have lived on the laurels won in those conflicts ever since.

Every righteous victory has a day after. The Protestant Reformation, unfortunately, was followed by terrible religious wars devastating most of Europe. One of the mistakes was the use of religious ideas in political conflicts.

We run similar risks today. The United States is not Jesus. Criticism of some of the country’s policies is not blasphemy. Recognizing and confessing our sins does not diminish the country but, instead, can be part of its renewal.

David P. Gushee, a professor at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia, has spoken about the beginnings of black slavery in America. The practice of slavery after 1619 “required an intensification of white racism. It also required an intentional deformation of other aspects of Christian belief and practice so that Christian people accommodate themselves to slavery.” (“Born in Heresy,” Sojo.net, Sept/Oct 2020. Italics are mine.)

Even after the United States was formed, Gushee says, “. . . we could have followed the British lead and abolished slavery. Instead, we deepened our excuses, weakened our ethics, and denied biblical theology.”

We even fought a Civil War. Technically, slavery was abolished after that, but the refusal to atone for our sins led to Jim Crow laws justifying segregation and denying black Americans the right to vote.

This is not ancient history. In the South where I grew up, blacks rode in the back of the bus and sent their children to underfunded black schools. As a child, I remember the separate water fountains in department stores neatly labeled “white” and “colored.”

Some white Americans seem unable to understand that centuries of racism continue to exert influence. The George Floyd murder by a white police officer is a reminder of the deep need for both repentance and change.

New Order Passing

We live in a new jobs age. The factory based model (husband goes off to work in a factory, assured good wages and healthcare, while his wife stays home with the children) is fast passing. Manufacturing jobs still exist, but they tend to be more specialized, requiring more training. Machines perform more and more of the old labor intensive, repetitive work.

Office work also is changing. Back in the twentieth century, as office workers grew in number, they adapted to the old manufacturing model. Companies created worker bee hives in office towers. Wives and mothers stayed in newly created suburban enclaves.

Then women began returning to the more ancient model: contributing to economic activity as they had always done. As women joined the work force in increasing numbers, the job/home separation became harder to maintain. Long commutes, automobile expenses, and child care problems illustrated the shortcomings of job/home separation.

The pandemic allowed us to try new models, including “office” work done at home, often on a schedule not tied to set hours at a set time. Some loved the new arrangement; some hated it. Many probably would like a combination.

The new model is more like the ancient model. For most of recorded history, work was tied to the home. Everybody worked in one form or another. Neighborhoods offered more than mere lodging.

That is not to see this period as idealistic. It included abuse and class privilege. Those who were different sometimes were shunned and bullied.

Nevertheless, the extreme separation of work from home caused by the industrial revolution is an aberration. The pandemic has allowed us the beginning of newer, more adjustable models.

Democracy’s Fallout

What if, in the United States, the majority passes laws we don’t believe in? What if representative government skews opposite from some of our chosen ideals?

If we are on a losing side, we face temptations. We may try to work the system so that only our kind of voter can actually make it to the polls.

Or we may go to extreme lengths as happened on January 6 and storm the capitol building, perhaps with the intent of physically harming those with whom we disagree.

Instead, perhaps we should begin with the understanding that governments are created by imperfect human beings. Thus, they are going to be imperfect.

In the year 1776, men who believed they had a right to self-government risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to declare their colonies free and independent states.

Of course, these first callers for self-government were not only all men, but all white men. Some of them, calling for this freedom, owned fellow human beings.

The struggle that began in a hot summer in Philadelphia in the 18th century was, we have to understand, only a beginning with much imperfection. To assume that our founding documents and beginning actions were somehow blessed by Jesus like holy writ, borders on apostasy. The founders were sinful men who had some good beginning ideas.

Our history is sometimes glorious and sometimes hideous, like the inability to get rid of slavery, leading finally to a ridiculous war. (Interestingly enough, if we had remained in the British empire, we would have seen slavery abolished in that empire in 1833, presumably without the Civil War.)

The length of time it took to give all citizens voting rights is shameful, as are today’s attempts to curtail recent gains.

We have known some redemption. We led democracies after World War II to stand up to the atrocities of the Soviet Union without a major war. The Marshall Plan, bringing aid to exhausted allies as well as defeated enemies, showed us at our best—and led to strong alliances.

The point is to see our country, not as some god, but as a journey with all kinds of temptations and all kinds of possibilities. Not surprising that we imperfect humans sometimes pull in different directions.

Reacting responsibly to the pulling, as it sometimes goes the way we want and sometimes not, includes refusing violence, even when we’re on the losing side. Somehow, we have to listen. We have to sympathize, while stating our own beliefs clearly but without violence—over and over if necessary.

Our republic is imperfect. We have to live with that. If we cherish beliefs that others don’t, we keep on speaking them, while never giving way to violence. Our black sisters and brothers surely can teach us .

Police Reform: Robert Peel’s “Bobbies”

London’s famous police officers, called “bobbies,” are named for Robert Peel, a British statesman who established the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1829. Apparently the idea of an urban police force, bypassing the military or a private force, was a new undertaking.

The three core ideas of Peel’s policies are:

“The goal is preventing crime, not catching criminals. If the police stop crime before it happens, we don’t have to punish citizens or suppress their rights. An effective police department doesn’t have high arrest stats; its community has low crime rates.

The key to preventing crime is earning public support. Every community member must share the responsibility of preventing crime, as if they were all volunteer members of the force. They will only accept this responsibility if the community supports and trusts the police.

The police earn public support by respecting community principles. Winning public approval requires hard work to build reputation: enforcing the laws impartially, hiring officers who represent and understand the community, and using force only as a last resort.”

These three core ideas of Peel’s policies found on the the website: https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/peel-policing-principles/

Notice the joining of police and community. Rather than abolishing police, we want to change it to a community supported force for good.

My Grandfather and the Night Riders

My grandfather was the sheriff of a rural Tennessee county in the early part of the twentieth century. During his time in office, a group called the “night riders” terrified local citizens with whom they disagreed, including minorities, attacking and beating them up at night.

They were probably associated with a strand of lawlessness active at the time in the western part of Tennessee. The new century brought changes some didn’t agree with.

I grew up on stories of my grandfather’s attempts to bring to justice those locals responsible for the attacks. My father remembered a time as a young child, waking up and hearing the night riders coming through town, shooting as they went. He remembered his father standing with a pistol, lighted by the lamp just before his father extinguished it.

At least some of the night riders were apprehended and jailed, with help from the Tennessee National Guard, whom my grandfather called in. Some of the local citizens resented his efforts to bring justice and order.

Today’s threats from vigilante groups remind me of those stories my father told. Such groups appear when some feel threatened by changing times. Some resent the calling out of old prejudices, people already uneasy with a world they didn’t create.

Measures instituted to prevent the disease Covid-19 are seen as some kind of attempt against personal liberty, rather than simply ways to save us from suffering and death. Rumors spread, this time with the speed of the internet.

Those of us interested in a safer and saner society can remain patient, even as we act in smaller ways to be kind and compassionate.

Losing Elections in America

The United States has held presidential elections every four years since 1792, frequently switching the winning party. If your candidate loses in an election, you can reasonably assume you will have another chance to vote on a change in four years.

The hope of change “next time,” happening again and again for over two centuries means we settle down and accept whoever is elected, our choice or not.

Except this year the candidate keeps trying to overturn the election results. Despite the most openly scrutinized election in U.S. history, the loser keeps trying to overturn what the vote decided and what the courts upheld.

The U.S. presidential election has worked year in and year out, in depression and prosperity, in war and peace, not because it’s a perfect system but because it overcomes the human tendency to keep power once gained.

Monarchy passes to the royal heir for the rest of the heir’s life span, whether they are qualified or not or whether most of the citizens desire it or not.

Dictators grab power through guns or violence no matter if their citizens favor them or not. They hold power as long as they own enough weapons or means of intimidation.

Representative rule, regularly accountable, means we have hope. It is risky in the sense that it depends on the losers to accept their loss.

To be wedded to a fallible human, whether Donald Trump or another, rather than the rule of law, sets a dangerous precedent.

Those Who Don’t Know History—

Margaret MacMillan has studied the lessons of world history from the 1930’s to the present. In a sober assessment of our current times. (“Which Past is Prologue?” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020)

MacMillan, a professor of history at Oxford University, writes: “The promise of the 1920’s was cut short by the Great Depression. . . . The result was the growth of extremist parties on both the right and the left.”

Then, she wrote, World War II followed because of “powerful leaders deliberately seeking confrontation.”

U.S. President Trump, MacMillan indicates, is a poor student of history and under him, “the United States has lost much of its moral authority.”

He has renounced arms control, pulled the United States out of the World Health Organization in the midst of a pandemic, flattered dictators, and weakened alliances that have benefitted the U.S. since the end of World War II. He attacks the free press and attempts to demean anyone who criticizes him.

Could his dance with dictators mirror the appeasement of Hitler by world leaders, leading eventually to the war?

At the end of her article, MacMillan writes of leaders at a crossroads: “Wise and brave ones may guide the world through the storms. Let us hope the last group has read some history.”

Saving the Churches?

Religion is declining, according to an article in Foreign Affairs (“Giving Up on God; The Global Decline of Religion,” Ronald F. Inglehart).

Among Christians in the United States, church attendance is down. Some churches are closing. Religious schools are cutting staff. Will the Covid-19 pandemic finally sound the death knell on religion, including Christianity?

Inglehart touches on many reasons for religion’s decline including replacement by newer, more inclusive sets of values. He cites “human rights, tolerance of outsiders, environmental protection, gender equality, and freedom of speech.”

Yet, reaching these goals is not a given were religion to become extinct. Plenty of non-religious people fail to practice them.

Perhaps, as G.K. Chesterton is often quoted: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

When we come close to trying Christianity, we may find the results casting doubt on its uselessness or actual harm.

For centuries, the cast down, enslaved, and violated, black Christians found the Christ that their white masters claimed to worship but did not know.

It’s no coincidence that the civil rights movement was led by black preachers. As long as injustices permeate a society, Christianity has the potential to be a worthy opponent.

Religion is not dying. It is reborn in the faith of black churches and all those treated unjustly. They are the ones who revive it.

“Openhanded to the Poor?”

“. . . there should be no poor among you . . . ” the Hebrew leader Moses states in the Christian Old Testament scriptures. (Deuteronomy 15:4 (NIV)).

But, Moses acknowledges, “There will always be poor people in the land.”

That being the case, he says: “Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.”

How were the Hebrews to carry out this command?

One way was debt forgiveness. In Old Testament times, land was the primary means of wealth. You grew crops for your family and sometimes to sell. If you accumulated extra money, you might buy the land of your neighbor and use it to obtain more wealth.

None of this was condemned in itself. However, it was understood that too much wealth could lead to unhealthy power for the wealthy. Ordinary citizens would become completely landless and at the mercy of the rich.

The answer was a year of debt forgiveness after every forty-nine years—the “Year of Jubilee.” Land was to be restored to the original families. The wealthy could accumulate more wealth for a time, but then the means of wealth was to be restored to all.

What are equivalents in modern times?

Suppose a financial recession, caused by dubious mortgage lending practices, wipes out the chief means of savings for many in the middle and working classes, the value of their homes? Lenders could be required to renegotiate mortgages into affordable payments for those affected.

When the price of higher education rises beyond the ability of ordinary families to send their children to college, state and federal governments could tax the more wealthy. The tax would subsidize the cost of higher education. After all, the owners of capital benefit from an educated work force.

When an unexpected medical emergency can send an ordinary family into debt for the rest of their lives, the government might consider an affordable health delivery system in which the chief object is healthy citizens, not millions for big pharma.

Unfortunately the ancient Hebrews failed to follow the practices laid on them. The wealthy began to “trample on the poor,” (Amos 5:11), God sent prophets calling them to change: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24)

When the Hebrews did not heed the warnings of Amos and other prophets, they were conquered by an enemy and went into exile for a season. They lost the land they would not share.

Making the Most of This Time

Families, schools, worship services, work places—-these and other communal gatherings have been upended by Covid-19.

In some cases, the results are disastrous—death and sickness, overloaded hospitals, domestic violence, closed businesses, and silent music halls.

Yet despite all the trauma, a few serendipitous sprouts have poked their heads above the misery.

A few families are dealing with closed schools and remote learning for their offspring by banding together to share teaching and child care in small joinings, more easily controlled for the virus.

The number of multi generational households has grown. Not all households profit by coming together—some families have deeply-rooted problems. Nevertheless, more than a few have found unexpected joys as they embrace what was the norm until the past century or so.

New ways of worship emerge from lock downs. No longer tied to services at a particular place and a particular time, some have found they enjoy tuning in to a prerecorded service at a time of their choosing and in whatever casual dress they prefer. Zoom meetings, while not ideal, do allow small groups to share as well, again from the comfort of their homes.

Surveys find a significant number of those able to keep their jobs by working remotely would prefer not to return full time to an office when the pandemic passes. Most say they’d like to spend at least part of the week working at home. Less days at the office might mean less child care problems, not to mention less commuting costs and possibly less pollution.

As so often happens, a crisis is can be an opportunity for creative change. Maybe we’ll discover ways to heal a society whose members have become all too remote from each other.

Living Free for How Long?

We tend to think in terms of our personal experiences, our personal lifetimes. But the short span of the current generation is hardly typical of the world as it has been throughout human history.

“Homo Sapiens has been around for about 8,000 generations, and for most of that time, life has been rather unpleasant,” Stephen D. Krasner, a professor at Stanford University, reminds us. (“Learning to Live with Despots,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020)

Only in the last few centuries have a few nations attempted participatory democracy, rule of law, and other practices we in developed nations tend to think of as normal.

“The experience of people living in wealthy industrialized democracies since the end of World War II, with lives relatively free of violence, is the exception,” writes Krasner.

For that reason, we who still live in such places should not take for granted that they will continue. Quite likely, the only reason for their continuance might be our realizing how precious they are.

We came close to losing our recently-found democracies during the last century. During a time of terrible economic troubles, some nations followed leaders who spoke to prejudice and fear and were allowed too much power.

Especially in a time of fear and confusion, as with Covid-19, we also may be tempted to give in to rumors and plays for power by a selfish few.

Read carefully and wisely. Vote at every opportunity. Support traditional institutions: family, small businesses, local newspapers. Care for your neighbors. Ignore those who would use these times to fan flames of racism or hatred.

Covid-19 and Fear

I was overseas with the U.S. State Department when the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took place. My post was in Saudi Arabia.

We suffered confusion, fear, a changed game plan in the time after it happened. After a while, though, those of us at the U.S. mission began to draw closer and pull together. We developed a purpose, a reason for living, tasks to carry out.

I don’t think the fear ever left us, especially after the war with Iraq began, and our posts closer to Iraq began suffering scud attacks. We learned to respect that fear, but our purpose and our friendships helped us deal with it.

The sudden realization accompanying the growth of the Covid-19 virus reminds me of those times. At first, perhaps, a denial, or telling ourselves that it’s all going to be over with soon, no problem.

But, of course, regardless of how long this particular sickness lasts in its current form, our world is changed forever. We will have choices to make, hardships to deal with. We will have to deal with them and with losses, not only of friends but of old ways. We face the fact that we could die—any of us.

Of course, that’s true any day of our lives, but the current pandemic outlines that truth for us.

I think the degree of health of our communities will determine whether we win or lose this challenge. How well we are able to come together with our families, religious gatherings, small governmental bodies, and the like will, I believe, be the key.

Learning About The Green Book

The Green Book was a travel guide for black Americans who wanted to travel–or had to travel for personal or family reasons. It was a guide to lodging places where they could stay—“were allowed”—to stay.

I didn’t learn about The Green Book until a few years ago, but one day as a child, I learned why it was necessary. It was perhaps the beginning of my education about racism.

My family was white. We liked to take trips. At that time, a family could afford modest trips—for us a day’s journey into the Smoky Mountains, for example—at a cost that didn’t break the bank. We stayed in inexpensive cabins and ate picnic lunches to avoid a lot of eating out.

One day we stopped at a gas station. A black family had experienced car trouble. They stood to one side, out of the way, while their car was worked on. No nearby motels or restaurants for them if the car took a while to fix.

I began to notice signs. No Coloreds and Whites Only.

I realized people without white skin couldn’t stay where we stayed. They couldn’t eat where we ate.

Black cooks worked in kitchens of restaurants where only whites were allowed to eat. It seemed so unfair. And it was.

That was only a modest dent in my understanding of white privilege. It didn’t speak to larger issues of voting and jobs and schools. But that day was when I first realized the restrictions on a simple family outing if you weren’t the right color.

From Fall of the Wall to Quid Pro Quo

Thirty years ago, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Country after country of the former Soviet Union took fledgling steps toward democracy.

Writes Louis D. Sell, a U.S. Foreign Service officer in Yugoslavia at the time: “No one who has ever had the opportunity to witness people standing with patient enthusiasm in long lines to vote for the first time in their lives . . . could ever doubt the power of democracy as an ideal.” (“1989: Seen From Yugoslavia,” The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019)

But we in Western democracies couldn’t comprehend the difficulty of people who had no tradition of democracy attempting to make it work.

Western democracies have centuries old traditions of struggle for people power, from at least 1215, when the Magna Carta limited the power of English king. A free press was a unique Western invention.

Many of the former Soviet nations lacked these traditional defenses against tyranny and against powerful oligarchies seizing wealth and power from collapsing regimes. Democratic practices in some of the countries began to reverse, governments coming under the sway of corrupted newly rich.

The United States and its allies began diplomatic policies to support the fight against corruption in these countries.

Imagine what the secret efforts of a U.S. president to bribe officials in one of those countries, Ukraine, for political gain have done to compromise these policies.

Frankenstein News

Some call Mary Shelley’s famous novel Frankenstein the first science fiction novel. Her theme is repeated in many later stories. Someone creates a powerful being or force only to see the creation become a weapon of destruction.

The printing press, popularized by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, was an amazing technological advance. It made possible the creation of reading material cheap enough for ordinary people to buy. All sorts of information became available. Everything from the Bible to new scientific theories to incendiary tracts was produced and consumed.

From that time, ordinary people had access to ideas and to the pleasures of reading. Countless lives have been saved through accessible knowledge.

However, cheap printing also made possible the spread of false information like the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax purporting to prove a Jewish plot to dominate the world. This type of easily accessible lying contributed to the murder of millions in World War II.

The digital age has multiplied the Gutenberg effect many times over. Warnings of hurricanes and other disasters wake us from sleep, pinged from our mobiles. Supreme Court decisions and election results are known instantly.

But anyone with an email account or a twitter handle can spread stories, verified or not, sending them off like so much tree pollen in a spring wind.

Efforts at some kind of control over hate material and outright lying are necessary but have limited success.

In truth, the only controls over this digital flood are we the consumers. We can be tempted by Frankenstein rumors or we can choose trusted sources for our information.

Fake News circa 1960

Lawrence Martin-Bittman created fake news for the Czech Communist Party in the 1950’s and 60’s. Sharon McConnell tells his story in “The Founding Father of Fake News (Writer’s Digest, March/April 2019).

Martin-Bittman joined the Communist Party in 1954 at age 15. After studying law and journalism in Czechoslovakia, he became an official in the Czech disinformation service. He became a press attaché in the Czech embassy in Vienna, working to distribute false news stories to journalists. His purpose was to poison the relationships between the United States and Western Europe.

In at least one instance, he used blackmail to force an Indonesian diplomat to feed false information about a U.S. “plot” to his home country of Indonesia. As a result, anger against Americans severely damaged American influence in the region.

In another instance, he captured signatures of American diplomats from Christmas cards and placed them on false documents.

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, however, horrified him and led him to change his mind about his communist beliefs. He fled with his wife to the United States.

After a year of debriefing in Washington, D.C., he eventually became a professor of journalism at Boston University.

McConnell writes, “Think about all the damage Martin-Bittman and his cohorts managed to cause before the internet existed. . . . As a reader, it’s important to approach headlines and text with a healthy sense of skepticism . . . considering the source . . . and looking for objective sources.”

Amen.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective