They Saw it Coming

I often find the wisdom and insights of people in the past to be more relevant than current analyses and predictions. In my reading this past week, I discovered three examples of such discernment: 

An objective analysis will one day see the Reagan administration as a powerful factor in turning this nation into an oligarchy and plutocracy.

  • Theologian William Stringfellow wrote in 1984, “It has lately come to pass that America has entered upon a dark age.” Ronald Reagan was president in 1984. With his folksy “aw shucks” demeanor, he seduced a majority of Americans into believing that gutting the safety nets provided by FDR in the New Deal, removing regulations which would protect the environment, scapegoating the poor and minorities, supporting a greedy and unprincipled capitalism which reinforced the precipitous disparity between the wealthy and the working and middle classes, and embracing the historically false claim that our nation was founded on conservative Christian beliefs (many of those leaders were Deists) were all in the best interests of our country. An objective analysis will one day see the Reagan administration as a powerful factor in turning this nation into an oligarchy and plutocracy. The driving objective of the Republican Party in the 20th and 21st centuries has always been granting tax breaks and advantages to the wealthy individuals and corporations in our society. Pandering to the fears and prejudices of people who ought to know better is a tactic to gain votes and keep Republicans in office. Stringfellow saw that the optimism Reagan inspired was based on unconscionable greed and unsustainable consumption. He also realized, like a Jewish teacher 2000 years ago, that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions and even if you gain the whole world and lose your soul in the process, what you have gained has not been worth the effort. The moral bankruptcy of today has historical roots, some of which began with a man who used his acting ability to deceive a nation into believing that greed is good and looking out for number one is admirable. 
  • In 1923, English priest Percy Widdrington asserted that the church needed to recover the good news of the Kingdom of God as the heart of the gospel. Such a recovery would bring about a reformation which would eclipse the Reformation of the 16th century. Since all New Testament scholars accept that the Kingdom of God was the message of Jesus, the recovery of that center would lead to a radical shift in the theology and life of the church and in society itself. He predicted that such a shift would result in both renewal and division. Many would resist such a change. However, Widdrington believed that if such a recovery was grounded in God, it could serve as the means for the church, at long last, authentically to follow its Lord. If the church did as Jesus commanded (“Seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice”), it would promote God’s agenda and not itself. Like Jesus, the church would give itself for the world in the name of God who so loves this world. We would become a servant church instead of being a self-promoting institution. 

Here we are in 2022 in as much need to hear Widdrington’s words as those in the 1920s (the “Roaring Twenties” which also embraced a hedonism and greed destined to crash into the Great Depression). Instead of seeking first the Kingdom of God/God’s will on this earth, much of the church in the United States is embracing an idolatrous nationalism identifying God with a very narrow, racist, and self-centered ideology. A century after Widdrington called the church to a radical transformation by simply focusing on Jesus’ teachings and life, we find ourselves in grave need of such counsel. 

  • In 1991, Anglican priest Kenneth Leech wrote a book which had a great impact on me: The Eye of the Storm: Living Spiritually in the Real World. Leech was not an armchair theologian. From the beginning of his ministry, he was involved in the struggles for civil rights and addressing youth homelessness. He advocated what he called “subversive orthodoxy” by which he meant a union of contemplative spirituality, sacramental worship, orthodox doctrine, and social action. His work for justice, the ordination of women, and gay and lesbian rights distinguished him from the more timid clergy of his time. While appreciating that spirituality can be personal, Leech insisted that it can never be private. He understood well the communal nature of the Christian faith grounded in the communal focus of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Thus, he constantly assaulted the pervasive individualism which has poisoned Western civilization. He wrote, “If we are to rescue Christian spirituality from its captivity to individualism and the culture of false inwardness, we will need to recover the sense of its social character, indeed, the sense of the social order of the gospel itself.” I believe Leech would have approved of theologian Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki’s definition of “spiritual”: “We ordinarily call people spiritual when their concerns go beyond themselves to the feelings, thoughts, and dreams of those around them, and of the world at large.”                                                                                                   

I find Leech even more relevant today than in 1991 when he wrote The Eye of the Storm. The American culture is suffering from an insane epidemic of individualism. Such imbecility can be seen in the recent past in two attitudes: the refusal to wear masks during the worst of Covid when such stubborn recalcitrance put the lives of others in jeopardy and the refusal to ban automatic assault weapons which serve no purpose but to kill in seconds a massive number of people. (How many more children must die before we come to our senses? The Indiana General Assembly, possibly the worst state legislature in the country, just passed a law which allows gun owners to go to most places with their firearms whether or not they have a license to carry guns. Those places include public libraries!) The concept of the “common good” has been totally lost in our society. Wallowing in our arrogance and narcissism, we may well “perish from the earth.”

[Slow growing …] cancer has metastasized throughout our society. It is at the root of most of our societal ills.

Leech was before his time in detecting the slow-growing cancer of American individualism. That cancer has metastasized throughout our society. It is at the root of most of our societal ills. Its cure will be costly and painful. I see little evidence that the majority of our citizens have the inclination, much less the discipline and courage, to undergo the radical treatment necessary to save us from ourselves. Leech called upon Christians to recover the basic human decency of community which is presumed in the gospel. (Black theologian James H. Cone wrote this about Leech’s book: “A timely, much-needed antidote to the excessive privatizing of spirituality.”) My fear is that with the rise of Christian nationalism, scapegoating, and bigotry even within churches claiming Jesus as their Lord, today’s spiritual shallowness and hypocrisy do not provide the foundation for such a radical repentance. But we must try to recover Jesus’ alternative to our insanity because to do nothing is simply not an option.  

But we must try to recover Jesus’ alternative to our insanity because to do nothing is simply not an option.  

From Stringfellow, we can gather the courage to acknowledge that we are living in a Dark Age which may become even darker without our recognition of its dangers and our sincere repentance. 

From Widdrington, we can recover the indispensable and nonnegotiable importance of the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ teachings and commit ourselves and our churches seek first that realm and its justice. Without that recovery, we have no right to call ourselves followers of Jesus.

From Leech, we can recover our humanity made in the image of God by rejecting the heresy of individualism and recovering the gospel mandate for a community of authentic shalom. 

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