Searching for God in Pennsylvania

We are meaning-seeking creatures. . . . [and] fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. . . . And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. – Karen Armstrong

The azaleas are in full bloom at my home in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the winter having ended early this year with a warm front sending late-Spring conditions to the Philadelphia suburbs on the first of March. The trees are beginning to turn green again as the sun has taken a more prominent role in pushing forward the advance of an early summer. Nature has a way of transforming the soul, of causing one to reflect on the essence of creation and the meaning of the universe. For me, this has led to my search for God in Pennsylvania.

For much of my adult life, I have struggled with religion and faith. What do I believe? How deeply do I believe it? How committed am I to any one set of theological beliefs and living truths? I embrace knowledge and history, science and nature. I am a rational human being who eagerly accepts and actively participates in the modern world. And yet, there remains the quest for the divine, the search for a transcendent power that I cannot see or prove, but which in my heart I know is present, however irrational such a belief may be. Although I cannot begin to understand the revelations and manifestations of God, my quest for God is essential to my search for meaning.

I am the son of a Lutheran minister, raised in a family and household that took religion and faith seriously, yet implicitly understood Abraham Joshua Heschel’s suggestion that “[t]he road to the sacred leads through the secular.” I was neither sheltered nor walled-off from the surrounding world, and engaged humanity in all its messy, nuanced, and complex dimensions. Within the confines of my eastern Lutheran upbringing, I witnessed ministers, youth directors, and people of faith who did not shy from the social, political, and cultural dimensions of secular society. During the sixties and seventies, in my education, participation in sports, and social interactions, I experienced the humanistic world of modern America far more deeply than the insular world of church and faith. Unlike my parents, whose entire lives have evolved around the Lutheran church, its people and institutions, as the years advanced and my life progressed, I have engaged with a more expansive set of people and cultures, including friends and colleagues of many faiths, or no faith, or little regard for faith; some who viewed religion with skepticism, or worse, contempt.

I see no conflict between faith and reason. A belief in God does not require a disdain for science. A respect for scientific knowledge and advancement does not demand that one reject all belief in God. What the Greeks referred to as logos and mythos defined two different aspects of the world in which we live – the knowable and the unknowable. Logos refers to rational, pragmatic, empirical thinking and seeks to answer the question “How?” Mythos refers to the intuitive, subconscious mode of thought found in art, music, literature, and religion and seeks to answer the question “Why?” These are not mutually exclusive concepts. You can seek answers in both realms. Indeed, it is the tenuous co-existence between faith and reason, the willingness to ask questions, the constant search for truth that leads to the transcendent or the divine, a belief in God, with all its doubt and ambiguity.

To believe in God is not to reject reason, but to embrace it, to experience God’s creation in all its majesty and wonderment, the inherent beauty of the natural world, the diversity of humanity, and the emotional attachment to our souls. The more we learn, the more tools we have to better understand the magnificence of the universe and the majesty of God.

It is easy to grow frustrated with the widely shared perception of popular culture and the media that insists on viewing religion, and particularly Christianity, in its most dogmatic, narrow, and absolute form. On one extreme are those who hold religion in contempt and tend to define it in its theologically weakest expressions – Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, biblical literalism, and rigid orthodoxy – easy targets for anyone who requires rational, evidence-based thinking. On the other extreme are “Christians” who demand a literal and strict interpretation of Scripture and reject alternative readings based on historical and scientific insight which may conflict with what they perceive as the authoritative, absolute word of God. In each instance, the believer and non-believer alike present an either-or dichotomy – either believe in the bible literally or reject God altogether. It reflects the constant push for a world of black-and-white, an all or nothing mindset in which things are simpler and easier to understand, and to accept or reject.

Not surprisingly, the reality is far more complex. For me, and for the majority of people caught in between, who fall somewhere in that complex miasma of ambiguous faith and varying degrees of belief, the either-or dichotomy simply does not apply. We are instead entangled in a web of heritage, family and history that connects us to particular faith traditions and which stands a world apart from what much of the secular left and Christian right perceive religion, or Christianity, or divine authority to be.

“Religion is hard work,” writes historian Karen Armstrong in The Case for God (Knopf, 2009). “Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed.” Armstrong counters the simplistic notions of faith often used by religious antagonists and religious fundamentalists alike to define religion. In a 2009 article in Foreign Policy (“Think Again: God”), Armstrong discussed the new atheism of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens (I would also include the less scholarly Bill Maher), who have “denounced religious belief as not only retrograde but evil; they regard themselves as the vanguard of a campaign to expunge it from human consciousness. Religion, they claim, creates divisions, strife, and warfare; it imprisons women and brainwashes children; its doctrines are primitive, unscientific, and irrational, essentially the preserve of the unsophisticated and gullible.”

Armstrong understands and has written extensively about religion’s historical shortcomings, and she has consistently challenged the mistaken theology and incorrect assertions of Christian fundamentalists. And while she has “written at length about the crusades, inquisitions, and persecutions that have scarred human history,” she rightfully notes in response to many atheists and skeptics that past abuses and desecrations do not tell the whole story.

Religion is also about the quest for transcendence, the discipline of compassion, and the endless search for meaning; it was not designed to provide us with the same kind of explanations as science, but to help us to live creatively, serenely, and kindly with the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition. As such, it continues to appeal to millions of human beings across the globe. To identify with its worst manifestations, claim that they represent the whole, and then demolish the straw dog thus set up does not seem a rational or useful way of conducting this important debate.

Failing to understand the complexity of religious life, the theological diversity within and among the many faith traditions, and how the typical practitioner views their faith and its meaning in their lives, does a great disservice to the shared humanity within us all.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 78% of Americans self-identify as Christian, yet when you hear the term “Christian” on NPR, Fox, and CNN, almost always it means “Christian right” or “Christian conservative.” Yet only one-third of American Christians are evangelicals (about 26% of Americans), and even this term includes a wide variety of Christians, such as born-again Christians, fundamentalists, and other non-denominational church goers with a diverse set of beliefs. Moreover, evangelicals include among their ranks not only political conservatives, but also a meaningful minority of political liberals (think Sojourners, Jim Wallis, and Tony Campolo). The remaining two-thirds of American Christians include Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, UCC, Methodist, etc.), and historically black Protestants (Baptist, AME, Pentecostal), with a smaller number of Mormons, Orthodox Christians, and other subgroups. As Timothy Noah of The New Republic noted recently, “To say that conservative Christians are the only Christians is like saying Hasidic Jews are the only Jews.”

Of course, very few of us really understand our own religions, their histories, traditions, and theological evolutions. Contemporary religious institutions ask little of its members, readily offering comfort while lacking the courage to challenge. Nearly a half-century ago, in “Religion in a Free Society” (The Insecurity of Freedom, First Noonday Press, 1967), Rabbi Heschel commented on the declining relevance of religion in modern life. “The trouble is that religion has become ‘religion’ – institution, dogma, ritual,” he wrote. While some people blame secular science and antireligious philosophy for religion’s descent, the blame lies mostly with institutional religion itself. “Religion declined not because it was refuted,” Heschel wrote, “but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; . . . when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”

Recently, I have been on a quest for finding a religious community at which I can feel comfortable – where I can learn and question and struggle without feeling judged as insufficiently committed or confused. I want a congregation that does not take a simplistic view of faith, rejects absolutes, accepts the equal validity of other faith traditions, and searches for answers to life’s most pressing questions; that strives for a just world here on Earth and is less concerned with the hereafter, and which sees the face of God in the ordinariness of everyday humanity. What I really want is a progressive Christian church with a Jewish sense of justice and history and a Buddhist sense of spirit. I’m a tough customer, I know.

In the end, however, it is really not about me, or my search for a comfortable religious home. As I walk through life’s pathways, I have learned that the search for God is an unending quest to better understand humanity and our place within it, our connection to each other, to nature, and our need to take care of all creation. “If you want to find Jesus,” the Reverend John Steinbruck, formerly of Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., used to say, “go to where the outcasts are – the sick, the homeless, the poor.” Heschel, too, reminded us that “the task of the human being is to represent the Divine, to be a reminder of the presence of God.”

The search for God, wherever that may occur and at whatever stage in life, requires an openness to the beauty of humanity in all its diversity, pain, and struggle; in the natural wonder of the universe in all its vastness; in developing genuine connections with nature and with each other. In the end, I may only satisfy my search for God, or at least the transcendence we call “God,” when I accept, in the words of Karen Armstrong, that faith “is not simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs; it is hard work, requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness that prevents us from achieving a more humane humanity.” As my search continues and the struggle to understand moves forward, I know the hard work required for a life of faith and understanding has only begun.

A Call for Compassion

Our greatest threat is not the atomic bomb. Our greatest threat is the callousness to the suffering of man. – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

We live in a dangerously polarized world, full of division and hatred, suffering and violence. Conflict rages in places as diverse and far off as Afghanistan and the Middle East, Chechnya and the Sudan. Although the chief causes of these conflicts are political and territorial, they are cloaked in religious terms. The world’s major religions – I speak here of the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – have failed miserably at countervailing the forces of injustice. In many parts of the world, religious fundamentalists, including many self-proclaimed Christians in this country, have sowed the flames of prejudice and ignorance. Muslim extremists have used their faith to justify and commit atrocities that violate Islam’s most sacred values. The Arab-Israeli conflict has been allowed to fester for generations, turning a secular and political conflict into a “holy” war in which reasoned compromise and pragmatic solutions are victim to intransigence and intolerance.

Every day the news is filled with stories of tragedy and conflict; of school shootings, suicides, and murders; financial institutions in crisis; the growing and shameful gap between the richest and poorest among us. People have lost faith in the political process and have stopped talking and listening to each other. Many young people today are beset with feelings of alienation and helplessness, as the religious and secular institutions around them seem impotent, incapable of solving the world’s problems.

Even the quality of our political conversations has suffered. When I was in college and law school in the early 1980’s, I often argued with my Republican friends and other students about current events. We debated many of the same issues that today continue to divide liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans – the government’s proper role in alleviating poverty and putting people to work; the need for social welfare programs; the pros and cons of government regulation. But even in the most heartfelt and animated discussions, there existed mutual respect and goodwill between us. It was understood that, though we disagreed on the means, we sought common ends; it was an accepted truth that each of us desired a peaceful and prosperous world. We struggled in different ways with issues of fairness and equality, productivity and individual responsibility, but we understood that our arguments were made in good faith. Sadly, in today’s environment, such civil discourse seems less possible.

Something is missing in American political life today. It has been festering like a sore for the past two decades or so, when compromise became a dirty word and the conversation turned bitter and ugly. Political disagreements are no longer principled differences, but instead reflect one’s integrity and worth as a human being. The cultural divide also has carried over into mainstream religious institutions, in debates over gay ordination and marriage, and in disputes over religious orthodoxy and biblical inerrancy. Lost in the political and religious culture wars is the concept of compassion.

In some circles, to speak of compassion is suspect, an indication that one is soft. For persons of power and influence, presidents and senators, civic and business leaders, speaking of a compassionate society suggests weakness. For most of us, in our everyday lives, compassion takes a back seat to cold realism. We do what we must to get through each day, to satisfy the demands of our jobs and of life’s competitive pressures.

Albert Einstein foresaw that as our society grew more modern and technologically advanced, we would need the virtues of our traditions more, not less. He described such tradition-based figures as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi, as “geniuses in the art of living – more necessary to the dignity, security and joy of humanity than the discoverers of objective knowledge.” In an age of atomic warfare, Einstein knew that the future of humanity demanded compassionate applications to the world’s problems, whether scientific, medical, economic, or political.

In November 2010, Krista Tippett, the host of NPR’s Speaking of Faith (now called On Being), lectured on compassion at a TED conference, rightly noting that compassion is a word of great meaning, one possessed of transformative powers. If properly understood, compassion has the power to change us, individually and collectively. Compassion is not, as is sometimes believed, sympathy or pity for the less fortunate. Rather, compassion consists of genuine expressions of kindness; of empathy for the sorrows and joys of others; of forgiveness and reconciliation, generosity and hospitality. Compassion is not a feeling or an emotion, but is physically manifested, and must be cultivated and practiced in everyday life. Compassion is curiosity without assumptions, a willingness to see beauty in others, including the child with Down’s syndrome, the mentally disabled man in a wheelchair, the toll collector, the police officer, the soldier; all of the strangers in our midst.

Compassion brings us into the territory of mystery and allows us to see the face of God in each other, in the members of our families, our friends, our co-workers; in the homeless women begging for change by the subway grate, and the drug addict huddled beneath the bridge. Compassion is tenderness.

One of the chief tests of our generation is whether we can build a global society that allows people of all religious and political persuasions to live together in peace and mutual respect. Where are the voices of compassion in the world today? The major faith traditions, which often are part of the problem, should be leading the way in helping to make a more just and compassionate world a reality. Historically and theologically, principles of compassion are embraced by all of the world’s religions. It is the essence of the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Judaism teaches tikkun olam, to repair the world; Jesus teaches to love thy neighbor as thyself; and Mohammed instructs, “That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind.” And yet, too often the voices of religious extremists drown out the voices of compassion.

Whether in the public pronouncements of Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, the bishops of Rome, or the ultra-Orthodox Hasidim in the West Bank, lately one hears few appeals to compassion; instead, the focus tends to be on matters of sexual conduct or ancient doctrinal disputes, implying that a “correct” view of these issues are the true criterion of faith. “Man has often made a god out of dogma,” admonished Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “a graven image which he worshipped. . . He would rather believe in the dogma than in God . . . [and] be ready to take other people’s lives, if they refuse to share his tenets.”

It is difficult to think of a time when the compassionate voice of religion has been so needed. Krista Tippett has said that she once believed “that all of the important and interesting problems in the world were political, and all of the solutions, too. But I changed my mind.” She has since realized there “are places in human experience that politics cannot analyze or address, and they are among our raw, essential, heartbreaking, and life-giving realities.” The really important things in life, as in death, “how to love, how we can be of service to each other . . . are the kinds of questions religion arose to address.” Have our religious institutions lived up this challenge?

How do we restore compassion to the center of our civic and political life? How can we make it the essence of religion, morality, and civic virtue? Theologian and historian Karen Armstrong, author of The History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Ballentine Books, 1993), and perhaps the world’s foremost expert on the history and traditions of the Abrahamic faiths, helped formulate the Charter for Compassion, an important and potentially transformative document drafted in November 2009 by the leading voices of six faith traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism). The Charter, which affirms that compassion “lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions,” calls upon people of all faiths “to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate; to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures; [and] to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings – even those regarded as enemies.”

Until we are able to see the humanity in each other, to set aside ego and transcend selfishness, to see the world through the eyes of the Other – the strangers among us, those with whom we disagree, our enemies and our friends; until we are able to feel empathy and seek genuine understanding, we are doomed to repeat the divisions and hatreds of the past. “There is no human being,” wrote Heschel, “who does not carry a treasure in his soul; a moment of insight, a memory of love, a dream of excellence, a call to worship.” True compassion breaks down the boundaries of politics, dogma, ideology, and religion. The practice of everyday compassion helps us recognize our interdependence and our shared humanity. “We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicion,” says Karen Armstrong, “or work with those that stress the interdependence and equality of all human beings.” The choice belongs to each of us.

The President on Prayer, Humility, and the Search for Wisdom

We see an aging parent wither under a long illness, or we lose a daughter or a husband in Afghanistan, we watch a gunman open fire in a supermarket -- and we remember how fleeting life can be. And we ask ourselves how have we treated others, whether we’ve told our family and friends how much we love them. And it’s in these moments, when we feel most intensely our mortality and our own flaws and the sins of the world, that we most desperately seek to touch the face of God. – President Barack Obama, February 3, 2011

In a time of political and social turmoil around the world and divisiveness at home, as the world watched street protests and the march for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia, and as the United States continued to recover from the tragic shooting in Tucson, the President took a moment this past week to speak from the heart. For the past sixty years, ever since Dwight Eisenhower occupied the White House, our presidents have attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. This year was no exception and it permitted an opportunity for President Obama to speak thoughtfully and passionately about his personal faith journey, his closeness to God, and his belief in the power of prayer to provide comfort and guidance. The speech, which was both humorous and moving, should finally put to rest any lingering questions regarding the authenticity or sincerity of the president’s faith, which goes far deeper than the majority of U.S. presidents over the past century.

Obama spoke publicly “as a fellow believer” and as one who entered public service through his work on behalf of churches. He acknowledged as a child that he was exposed to very little organized religion and that he “did not come from a particularly religious family.” His father, whom he had met only once his entire life, and then only for a month, was “a non-believer throughout his life.” The president’s mother, who wielded great influence on Obama as a child, and whose Midwestern values remain embedded in his soul, was the product of Baptist and Methodist parents. But she “grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion” and, like many apathetic and agnostic Christians, took young Barack Obama to church, if at all, only on Easter and Christmas. Despite her skepticism, however, she also was a very spiritual person, “who was instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness and fair play.”

It was through his mother that Obama learned to value equality between men and women, the imperative of living an ethical life, and of acting on one’s beliefs. And “despite the absence of a formal religious upbringing,” he was inspired by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and the many prominent Christian leaders of the civil rights movement who sought to “transform a nation through the force of love.” He also was influenced by more ecumenical leaders, such as Father Theodore Hesburg and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose “call to fix what was broken in our world, a call rooted in faith,” led Obama to become a community organizer and to work on behalf of “a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago.” From this experience, “working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods," did Obama come "to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my lord and savior.”

Like many of us, Obama’s “faith journey has had its twists and turns.” Along the way, “[i]n the wake of failures and disappointments, I've questioned what God had in store for me and been reminded that God’s plans for us may not always match our own short-sighted desires.” As with President Lincoln, who knelt often in prayer when faced with the daily pressures of saving a nation at war with itself, Obama’s Christian faith “has been a sustaining force" during his time in office. In addition to prayer, he finds “consistent respite and fellowship” at the Chapel at Camp David and starts his mornings with “meditations from Scripture.”

At the prayer breakfast, the president subtly alluded to his critics; “when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God.” He emphasized, however, the uniting force of faith. He referred to Senator Tom Coburn, a conservative Republican who disagrees with Obama on most issues, as “not only a dear friend but also a brother in Christ. . . . Even though we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition that we pray to and serve the same God.”

As Obama travels around the country, he is often asked what he prays for. While he resorts to prayer on a host of issues (one of which concerns the length of Malia’s dresses), a few “common themes” recur. One arises from “the urgency of the Old Testament prophets and the Gospel itself. I pray for my ability to help those who are struggling. Christian tradition teaches that . . . we're called to work on behalf of a God that chose justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable.” He spoke of those who have lost their jobs and struggle to take care of their families; people in pain, who have suffered a loss of self-esteem, or worse, their homes and access to affordable health care. He knows that, as president, he cannot help everyone, and that fixing the economy and seeking peace takes time and patience. But as he moves forward, “it is my faith [and the] biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed.”

The president talked proudly of the many churches, synagogues, and faith-based organizations that work every day to solve human problems, but noted that there are limits to what private charities can do. “Now, sometimes faith groups can do the work of caring for the least of these on their own; sometimes they need a partner, whether it’s in business or government.” As an example, he discussed the work of the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, an initiative started under President George W. Bush, and which under Obama is working to expand “the way faith groups can partner with our government. . . . helping them feed more kids who otherwise would go hungry. . . . helping fatherhood groups get dads the support they need to be there for their children. . . . [and] working with non-profits to improve the lives of people around the world.” And while such work must be “aligned with our constitutional principles,” it also should be rooted in “notions of partnership and justice and the imperatives to help the poor.”

The nature and scope of some problems necessarily require a more active public involvement, for “in a caring and . . . just society, government must have a role to play.”

[T]here are some needs that require more resources than faith groups have at their disposal. There’s only so much a church can do to help all the families in need -- all those who need help making a mortgage payment, or avoiding foreclosure, or making sure their child can go to college. There’s only so much that a nonprofit can do to help a community rebuild in the wake of disaster. There’s only so much the private sector will do to help folks who are desperately sick get the care that they need.

And that's why I continue to believe . . . that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.

This is, of course, an area that distinguishes philosophically the president and most Democrats from many Republicans, who place greater emphasis on acts of charity and resist the role of government as compassionate benefactor. It is a debate that goes to the heart of our democracy and the role of government. There is certainly room for principled disagreement. But there is no room to question the president’s faith, or patriotism, or love of country. Perhaps this is why the president also spoke of the importance and need for humility. For however polarized and divisive our politics may become, it is always “useful to go back to Scripture to remind ourselves that none of us has all the answers -- none of us, no matter what our political party or our station in life.”

“The full breadth of human knowledge is like a grain of sand in God’s hands. And there are some mysteries in this world we cannot fully comprehend.” It is this challenge, then, the need to balance uncertainty and humility and to be open to other points of view, with the need to fight for what is right and to remain committed to one’s deeply held convictions, which forms the core of our democracy and underlies the president’s need for prayer. Only by constant “reminders of our shared hopes and our shared dreams and our shared limitations as children of God” can Americans travel forward together.

At the conclusion of his speech, the president noted that, while he hopes his prayers will be answered, he knows “that the act of prayer itself is a source of strength. It’s a reminder that our time on Earth is not just about us; that when we open ourselves to the possibility that God might have a larger purpose for our lives, there’s a chance that somehow, in ways that we may never fully know, God will use us well.” Amen, Mr. President.

First and Foremost a Preacher: The Anti-War Imperative of Martin Luther King Jr.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. – Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City and delivered the single most powerful indictment of the Vietnam War by a leading voice of moral dissent in American society. Before a large gathering of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, surrounded by such heavyweights as Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel and Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, King explained why it was time to break his silence on the war. Though he had become closely allied with President Lyndon Johnson, he acknowledged that “when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war.” Over the course of the next 45 minutes, he articulated his opposition to war in principle and to American involvement in Vietnam in particular, condemning in the strongest terms the policies of a Democratic president who had, just a few years earlier, helped King secure passage of the most significant civil rights and voting rights laws in American history.

King chose Riverside Church to demonstrate that the anti-war cause he embraced was not a subversive movement, but resulted from a life-long commitment to Christian principles. He had “come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.” He anticipated, correctly as it turned out, that his statements would be criticized by many of his own supporters, including members of the black community who believed that King’s foray into the anti-war movement would dilute his efforts to secure civil, economic, and human rights for all Americans. He was “greatly saddened” by such criticism, however, “for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling.”

For King, there was nothing inconsistent in speaking out on behalf of the poor and opposing an unjust war. The build-up in Vietnam was diverting resources away from anti-poverty efforts at home and, because of draft exemptions that disproportionately benefited affluent whites, the poor increasingly were called to “fight and die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.”

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. . . .

King was first and foremost a preacher whose faith and calling exceeded national allegiances and compelled him to act within the meaning of his commitment “to the ministry of Jesus Christ.”

To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men – for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?

King also had an abiding faith in American democracy and the principles upon which our nation was founded. Four years earlier, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., he spoke to the hopes and dreams of all American citizens that the nation would one day rise up and embrace the ideals of justice and equality for all. “I have a dream,” he said. In 1964, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, King understood that beyond the race problem in America was the problem of violence and “the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.” By 1967, however, his movement for non-violent social change was under attack from some of the very people he was trying to help, from the growing militancy of urban blacks and the rise of the black power movement, to the competing visions of more radical and less conciliatory forces. Yet as a follower of Jesus and as a student of Ghandi, King never wavered in his commitment to non-violence, in his belief that love was more powerful than hate, that to break down the walls of oppression and injustice required an appeal to the hearts and souls of his fellow human beings.

From the pulpit at Riverside Church, King ached for the soul of America and believed it “incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.” In a manner exceptional for an American social critic and prophet of his day, King’s voice of conscience crossed national boundaries. He reviewed the history of colonial repression in Vietnam and saw how western powers repeatedly sided with the forces of despotism and oppression in squelching the revolutionary forces of independence. Although in 1945 the Vietnamese people proclaimed independence from French and Japanese occupation, U.S. policy makers believed the people of Vietnam were not ready for independence, and for nine years “vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.”

As a result, the peasants of Vietnam were denied a chance at real and meaningful land reform, something they genuinely needed, and instead were ruled by one of history’s most vicious modern dictators, Premier Diem. By the time King stood in the podium at Riverside Church, superior American air power and napalm had destroyed an ancient culture, its farms and forests; U.S. forces had killed over a million people, including tens of thousands of children. If King was to take his calling as a Christian pastor seriously, if he was to remain committed to his moral and ethical beliefs, he could not remain silent as the United States subjected a country the size of Italy to more than three times the tonnage of bombs dropped in all of World War II.

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. . . . We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

As a pastor and as an American, King also was deeply concerned with what the war was doing to the American soldiers who had to fight it, for “what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.”

It was time, King said, for the madness to cease. In demanding an end to the war, he spoke in language consistent with his pastoral calling and which implicitly embraced the Christian concept of care for the “least of these” as expressed in Matthew 25:

I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. . . . I speak as one who loves America.

King encouraged churches and synagogues to protest the war and to take creative actions in opposition to it. He then looked beyond Vietnam and addressed the wrongs of war itself.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

King called for a unilateral cease-fire, an end to the bombing, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Although in seven years, U.S. policy makers would accept the wisdom of King’s words, in April 1967, King was very much in the minority. President Johnson never forgave King for breaking ranks. A large segment of the civil rights movement deplored King’s violation of an unspoken contract. The mainstream press also turned on King. The New York Times called King’s sermon at Riverside Church “wasteful and self-defeating.” Life magazine said it was “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post suggested that King’s followers “would never again accord him the same confidence” and said he had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, and his people.”

King answered his critics during a television interview on July 28, 1967. When asked about the supposed contradiction between his efforts for civil rights and his statements against the war, King replied, “Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And wherever I see injustice, I’m going to take a stand against it whether it’s in Mississippi or in Vietnam.”

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, one year to the day after his remarks at Riverside Church. We will never know how American history might have changed if the nation had followed King’s advice in 1967. Had America listened to King, thousands of young American boys would have come home and lived to work and love and raise families of their own; the people and environment of Vietnam would have been spared some of the worst destruction in the annals of warfare; and America would not have ended its involvement in Vietnam on the wrong side of history.

As I look back 43 years later, it is apparent that the moral courage of a Martin Luther King Jr. is exceedingly rare. His was a lonely courage. He spoke out against the war at a time when the majority of Americans remained in support of U.S. policy. He branched off when the civil rights movement was divided, when supporters of non-violence were dwindling, and when the easy thing to do would have been to remain silent. He publicly broke from a president who had risked his political support in the South to help the causes for which King had fought his entire adult life, and he rejected conformity to an anti-Communist dogma that had dominated American politics for a generation. He exercised a most difficult form of courage, risking everything for a cause greater than himself.

I recognize that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a saint.  He was not perfect. Like all of us, he was a mortal human being with human flaws. No one understood this better than King. But today more than ever we need people with King’s exceptional courage and prophetic insight, his moral voice and passion for justice, his vision of peace and universal love. As a people, we are less complete in his absence.

The Search for Meaning on 9/11: Missing the Wisdom of Abraham Joshua Heschel

I suggest that the most significant basis for meeting men of different religious traditions is the level of fear and trembling, of humility, of contrition, where our individual moments of faith are mere waves in the endless ocean of mankind’s reaching out for God, where all formulations and articulations appear as understatements, where our souls are swept away by the awareness of the urgency of answering God’s commandment. . . .
--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

As I write this, our nation prepares once again to commemorate the tragedy and loss experienced on September 11, 2001. During the past nine years, we have embarked on two wars, buried over 5,660 American soldiers, and we continue to deploy more than 150,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are embroiled in a national debate over the meaning of religious freedom and the limits of the First Amendment. Muslim-Americans throughout the country feel under attack, blamed unfairly for the atrocities of their most radical brethren. Plans to build mosques in several states are opposed by vocal mobs chanting anti-Islamic slogans, mirroring the controversy over the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero. A lunatic fringe, led by a fundamentalist “preacher” in Florida, disgracefully talks of burning the Koran (their plans canceled for now), thereby insulting and inflaming the world’s Muslims.

My oldest daughter, Jennifer, was born twenty years ago today. On her eleventh birthday, the meaning of September 11 was forever altered and serves now as a timely reminder that our lives are short, the search for meaning more urgent, as the world is so much grander than each of us. This year, as well, September 11 overlaps with the Jewish High Holy Days, starting with Rosh Hashanah, which calls upon Jews the world over to engage in further reflection and contemplation. What better time, then, to turn to Abraham Joshua Heschel – rabbi, theologian, social activist, and mystic, widely admired by Christians and Jews alike – for counsel and guidance in these troubled times.

Although he died in 1972, I believe we need Heschel’s prophetic voice now more than ever. So much of what he said in his lifetime is relevant today. For the families of those who lost loved ones on 9/11 and for others seeking to make sense of it all, Heschel’s experience in the Holocaust – he lost two sisters at Treblinka and his mother died of a heart attack when the Nazis came to her door – and his words of spiritual healing and enlightenment despite these experiences, speak deeply. Unlike many of his contemporaries following World War II, Heschel never blamed God for the Holocaust. God did not commit the evil perpetrated in the concentration camps and gas chambers, he argued. It was, rather, the depravity of human beings acting in defiance of God and of faith. Heschel contended that God suffered with the victims, and would today teach us that the atrocities and evil committed on 9/11 were inflicted not by God, nor by Islam, but by nineteen fanatics who misinterpreted their religion and blasphemed God.

If Islam committed any crime on 9/11, it was the same crime committed by Christianity during the Holocaust – that of silence, the failure of peace-loving Muslims to speak out with sufficient force against the misguided members of their faith, far too many of whom believe that the Koran requires acts of martyrdom and violence against perceived infidels. “The opposite of good is not evil,” Heschel declared often, “the opposite of good is indifference.” Heschel understood that only human beings could challenge injustice, that God needed humans to correct the wrongs in society. Having lived through the rise of Hitler in Germany, he was all too aware of the capacities of mass silence and indifference. “How many disasters do we have to go through in order to realize that all of humanity has a stake in the liberty of one person? . . . In a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible.”

Of course, Heschel was a man of action and not merely words. He fought all forms of anti-Semitism, campaigning for the rights of Soviet Jews and lobbying the Pope during the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960’s to renounce church teachings that demeaned Jews or anticipated their conversion. He fought racism and segregation, marching arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. If history were any guide, he would today have spoken forcefully against the rising tide of Islamophobia in the United States.

Heschel saw the divine in every person and emphasized the holiness and sanctity of every human being. “We are called upon to be an image of God . . . and the task of a human being is to represent the Divine, to be a reminder of the presence of God.” Heschel believed that what ailed modern society was the lack of a personal awareness of God. He spoke convincingly of encounters with the mystery of the “divine” that is both within each of us and beyond us; that “discloses unity where we see diversity; . . . peace where we are involved in discord.”

Heschel connected with the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and with King in particular because he believed, like King, that the God of the Bible struggles with us, suffers with us, and is affected by how human beings treat one another. “God stands in an intimate relationship to the world,” Heschel believed, and thus God “has a stake in the human situation.” Because God is “intimately affected” by the treatment human beings afford each other, “God is never neutral, never beyond good and evil.” The political implications of Heschel’s theology are clear: created in God’s image, we are each a reminder of God’s presence; when we engage in acts of violence and murder, we commit such acts against God’s divine likeness. “Whatever I do to man, I do to God,” Heschel explained. “When I hurt a human being, I injure God.”

In an age when religion divides people and nations, Heschel emphasized the common underpinnings of faith. Although profoundly devoted to his own tradition, he believed deeply that people of different faiths must talk to one another in a spirit of humility and respect, not to change or convert the other, but to better understand one another. “We must choose between interfaith and internihilism,” he often said, “No religion is an island.” Although most of Heschel’s ecumenical dealings were with Catholics and Protestants, shortly before his death he flew to Rome (against his doctor’s orders) to attend a conference of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders on the future of Jerusalem. “It is important to remember now,” Heschel said, “that, while I have prayed from the heart for Muslims all my life, I have never prayed with them before, or been face-to-face with them to talk about God . . . we must go further.”

Rabbi Arthur Green, a professor at Brandeis University and former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, has explained that Heschel

. . . [L]iked to tell the Hasidic tale of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad who invited a group of disciples to come share with him in a ride in his coach. “But there is not enough room!” a disciple cried out, “the rebbe will be crowded.” The master replied: “Then we shall have to love each other more. If we love each other more, there will be room for us all.” Heschel understood that all of humanity rides in that coach, one that can be either the divine chariot of God or the crowded, sealed railway car. The choice, he insisted, is a human one, and we who have escaped the terrors of hell are here to help all our fellow humans make that choice. [From the essay Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Memoir]

Heschel taught that God depended upon humanity to repair and heal the world. The God of the Bible was like the parent of all humanity, “who cannot stand to see the suffering of God’s children.” For Heschel, it was very simple. God needs his children to take care of each other.

For a society obsessed with non-stop consumerism and technologically driven noise, Heschel taught the value of the Sabbath as a sanctuary in time, when “we are called upon . . . to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation.” The concept of the Sabbath urges a day of rest, reflection, study and prayer that is essential to the dignity of human beings and the nourishment of the soul. “The modern man does not know how to stand still, how to appreciate a moment, an event for its own sake.”

Throughout his life, Heschel remained devoted and secure in his Jewish faith, though he openly acknowledged the depth and beauty of other faith traditions. He gave us the tools for religious dialogue, believing that no one possessed a monopoly on the truth. It was clear to Heschel that people of different faiths needed one another. His interfaith involvements extended beyond his alliance with King and the civil rights movement, and included his work with the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council, and a visiting professorship at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he developed a close kinship with the great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Heschel understood in all of these encounters that, although their religious beliefs and practices differed, all lived in the presence of God. “There is no human being,” Heschel said in 1961, “who does not carry a treasure in his soul; a moment of insight, a memory of love, a dream of excellence, a call to worship.”

Regardless of one’s age, race, religion, or ethnicity, Heschel believed we must never lose sight of our humanity, for we all possess a soul, a spirit, a heart, and a mind, and it is imperative that we use them. His wisdom transcended generations, cultures, and religions, and the quest for common ground inspired his theology. “Oceans divide us, God’s presence unites us,” he said. “God is present wherever man is afflicted, and all of humanity is embroiled in every agony wherever it may be.”

Because Heschel spoke so eloquently on Christian-Jewish relations and the need for dialogue, I am certain that, were he alive today, he would have spoken with equal passion about Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations. To Heschel, each and every person was sacred. “To meet a human being is an opportunity to sense the image of God, the presence of God.” His voice is sorely missed in today’s world; if only the power of his words could be felt by the likes of radical jihadists, intolerant fundamentalist preachers, and others who remain closed to sharing, learning, and listening to people of different cultures and faiths. “Unless we learn how to help one another, we will only weaken each other.”

He opposed religious parochialism. “Should we refuse to be on speaking terms with one another and hope for each other’s failure? Or should we pray for each other’s health, and help one another in preserving our respective legacies, in preserving a common legacy?” For Heschel, as for us all, the answer is obvious: “The world is too small for anything but mutual care and deep respect; the world is too great for anything but responsibility for one another.”

The Theology and Continued Relevance of Martin Luther King Jr.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions for our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
--Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.

Although his life was cut short by an assassin’s bullet at the age of 39, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., preached a message of universal love and understanding. A fervent believer in Christian pacifism and nonviolent social change, by the time he died in 1968, King had led millions of people in shattering the legal system of racial segregation in the South and in exposing the economic and social inequities of the North. A powerfully passionate and effective advocate for racial justice and civil and human rights, he also was a leading voice of the peace movement that opposed the Vietnam War, and he remains one of the great moral voices of the Twentieth Century. However, what intellectual strains influenced King’s theology, and do they remain relevant today?

As a young seminary student, and throughout his life, King was impacted greatly (though by no means exclusively) by the Social Gospel movement of Walter Rauschenbusch. A ministry for the real world, the Social Gospel movement meant to bridge the gap between saving souls and saving lives, between the spiritual dimensions of religion and the Church’s obligation to seek justice and act as the moral conscience of society. Rauschenbusch, a progressive German-Lutheran turned Baptist minister, was profoundly affected by his ministry in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York in the late 1880’s, an experience that educated him on the injustices of poverty, educational deficiencies, and inequalities then prevalent in American society. In Christianity and the Social Crisis, one of the few books King would specifically cite as influencing his own theology, Rauschenbusch articulated the Christian duty to act in the spirit of love to improve social conditions.

As the minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and later at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King would emulate Rauschenbusch’s contention that the minister’s job is “to apply the teaching functions of the pulpit to the pressing questions of public morality.” Although critics denounced Rauschenbusch as a Utopian idealist, to King and others, the Social Gospel movement saved Christianity from irrelevance by defining social justice as the closest approximation of God’s kingdom on earth.

A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man’s social conditions. . . . Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion.
--Martin Luther King Jr.

A similar, if later influence on King was his friendship in the 1960’s with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who joined with King in the struggle for civil rights in the South and in efforts to oppose American involvement in Vietnam. Writing on the topic of “Religion in a Free Society,” Heschel contended that “when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless” (The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967). As Heschel explained:

Religion has often suffered from the tendency to become an end in itself, to seclude the holy, to become parochial, self-indulgent, self-seeking; as if the task were not to ennoble human nature but to enhance the power and beauty of its institutions or to enlarge the body of doctrines. It has often done more to canonize prejudices than to wrestle for truth; to petrify the sacred than to sanctify the secular. Yet the task of religion is to be a challenge to the stabilization of values.

Heschel contended that the prophets of old “dwelt more on the affairs of the royal palace, on the ways and views of the courts of justice, than on the problems of the priestly rituals at the temple of Jerusalem.” The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures confronted the world as it existed, and were not concerned with the hereafter. For this reason, according to Heschel, “Tranquility is unknown to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest.” As a modern-day prophet, King understood precisely that to which Heschel referred in challenging the realities of racism, discrimination, hatred, and prejudice. King’s was not a tranquil time and he had little occasion for rest.

In his ministry to the poor and oppressed, King found solace in the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. King spoke of universal, or agape love, based on the Greek word in the New Testament that referenced God’s love for humanity and which King believed was at the essence of Christianity – a selfless form of love that remains constant even if no love is reciprocated. While King professed that “love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend,” he knew that “the best way to assure oneself that love is disinterested is to have love for the enemy-neighbor from whom you can expect no good in return, but only hostility and persecution.” He would use this concept in leading non-violent civil disobedience during the sit-ins and demonstrations in the early 1960’s. King believed that nonviolent resistance, when practiced effectively, disarmed one’s opponent by disturbing his conscience.

Although he preached a message of universal love, King was also a Christian realist in the mold of Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Protestant theologian and author of Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) and The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941). Niebuhr, who considered the Social Gospel movement naïve in believing that human beings would respond collectively to calls for justice and love, had a major impact on King’s struggles for justice in the Jim Crow south. Large social groups, according to Niebuhr, whether corporations, labor unions, or nations, were by nature selfish. Society responded only to power; piety, charity, education, and reform could never hope to eliminate injustice without involving itself directly in power conflicts. “Even in a just and free society, there must be forms of pressure short of violence, but more potent than the vote, to establish justice in collective relations.” King’s study of Niebuhr led him to a fuller understanding of human motives, group behavior, and the connection between power and morality. In the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King’s methods put pressure on the finances of the white business community, which eventually “coerced” a negotiated settlement that improved the lot of blacks in Montgomery.

King’s reflections on Niebuhr’s theology helped him view more clearly the decade long protest campaign inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, which led to India’s independence from British control. In Stride Toward Freedom (Beacon Press, 1958), King wrote that “Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale. . . . It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking.” King came to view “the Christian doctrine of love, operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence, [as] one of the most potent weapons available to an oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”

Like Niebuhr, King viewed the actions of Gandhi through the lens of power conflict and realism. While many religious idealists assumed that Gandhi’s methods were politically effective while avoiding the corruptions of the world, Niebuhr saw in Gandhi’s strikes, boycotts, marches, and demonstrations, a political strategy that was essentially coercive in forcing changes to the societal balance of power. In later years, King would describe Gandhian nonviolence as “merely a Niebuhrian stratagem of power.”

Another important aspect of King’s theology, and one often overlooked, is the concept of imago Dei, the belief that human beings are created in God’s image. For King, God’s creation of humanity was a powerful argument for the equality of all people. King believed that being made in God’s image meant that human beings had the right and the power to reshape society and to build a “beloved community” on earth. Rabbi Heschel reflected similar sentiments: “We are called upon to be an image of God. You see, God is absent, invisible, and the task of a human being is to represent the Divine, to be a reminder of the presence of God.”

Individually and collectively, these doctrines provided King with a theological rationale to address the needs of the community far outside the walls of his church, and were central to the dynamics of the modern civil rights movement. Although grounded in the concept of Christian love, King knew that love alone could not effect positive change. “Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin.”

We have made substantial progress since King’s death in 1968. King’s legacy is reflected in part by our election of an African American president; by laws that prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination; by social mores that suppress outward expressions of racial hostility and prejudice; and by a growing black middle class, black mayors and congressional representatives, black police chiefs and astronauts, black military leaders and news anchors. Yet racial reconciliation in this country is far from complete. As King said, “Like life, racial understanding is not something that we find but something that we must create. And so the ability of [blacks] and whites to work together, to understand each other, will not be found ready-made; it must be created by the fact of contact.”

The struggles for justice, peace, and equal rights for all will remain with us for generations to come. The focus must necessarily shift at times to other parts of the world – the quest for peace in the Middle East; the cessation of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan; the end of civil strife in Africa; the search for economic and political justice in Latin America and Asia. Had there ever been a Palestinian leader, for example, who applied the concept of Gandhian nonviolence to the Palestinians’ struggles with Israel, a two-state solution would have happened a long time ago. Yet rather than nonviolent resistance to West Bank settlements and the allocation of water resources, the Palestinians have mostly adopted the methods of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yasir Arafat, shelling Israeli towns, organizing suicide bombings, and committing violence against innocent people. If they had asked King in 1968, he would have told them that such methods would render them just as powerless 40 years later.

For churches, synagogues, and mosques to remain relevant, they too must follow King’s lead and speak with a moral voice to the power dynamics of the world today, to government and industry, unions and military units, international governing bodies and news outlets. Only by applying the concept of universal love and understanding, combined with non-violent pressure, can justice truly be achieved among societies, nations, and institutions. “If there is to be peace on earth and goodwill toward men,” King said, “we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations.” While King’s message, teachings, and life remains ever so relevant today, will we as a people answer his call?

On Seizing the Day and Unfulfilled Dreams

How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. --Stanley Kunitz (“The Layers”)

I never knew my Uncle Ted. (In the picture above, he is standing in the second row at the end on the right hand side, the tallest of the bunch.) His plane and crew fell from the sky, shot down over Vienna on March 22, 1945. Ted was 21 years old at the time, the second oldest of three brothers, and the son of two loving parents. My father remembers Ted as mature and wise beyond his years; a kind and gentle man, somewhat shy and bookish, he had plans to attend college when the war was over, possibly to go on to seminary and become a Lutheran minister. Ted died a hero’s death, fighting for our freedoms, yet I cannot help but wonder what might have been – for Ted, and for the millions of young men who died in that war and the many others our nation has fought.

My Dad recalls a delightful spring Saturday in early April 1945. Only fifteen years old then, a high school sophomore, Dad had just finished baseball practice and was walking home from Lincoln High School a few blocks away. As he approached his family’s Jersey City row house, he noticed his father looking out the upstairs window. As he often did in those days, Dad tried to show off, flipping his glove into the air and catching it behind his back. With a smile on his face, he looked up at the second floor window, only to see his father walk away. There was something not right in his father’s reaction; it was as if his father had turned his back on him, as if my grandfather could not comprehend the frivolity of a spring afternoon and the joking escapades of his youngest son.

When Dad entered the house, he understood immediately. His parents, my grandparents, with tears in their eyes, explained that a telegram from the U.S. Department of the Army had just arrived, informing them that Ted’s B-24 had crashed over the hillsides of Vienna, Austria. As Ted’s body remained unidentified, he was officially listed as “missing in action.” One can only imagine the devastation and pain that such news brings, the likelihood, yet uncertainty, of your child’s death; compounded further by the fear that your other son – my Dad’s brother Warren, the oldest of the three sons, was in Okinawa – might yet receive the same fate. The news then reported from Japan was not good, and the distinct possibility existed of losing two sons in the same war.

Warren thankfully came home after the war; he would marry my Aunt Ann and live another 35 years, work a productive life, raise four children – my cousins – and celebrate 35 more Christmases, unwrapping presents by the tree. He would read books, debate politics, pray, laugh, cry, become exasperated at his sons’ exploits and proud of their accomplishments; he would experience life, the future, and the possibilities, dreams and disappointments of everyday existence.

Ted suffered a different, more tragic, if noble fate. My grandparents learned that two crew members in parachutes had jumped from Ted’s B-24, but only one man out of the ten-person crew was known to have survived. The others remained missing. My grandparents, and the parents of the other nine crew members, latched onto the sliver of hope that, maybe, just maybe, their son was the one in the other parachute. Over the next year, news accounts said that many unidentified military personnel who had survived the war had come back as amnesia victims. Gold Star parents – those who had lost a loved one in battle, or whose sons were deemed missing in action – received permission to walk through the wards of military hospitals in search of their sons. On many occasions over the next year, my Dad accompanied his parents – hoping against hope – that they would find Ted in one of the hospitals. My Dad has often said that he will never forget these experiences; the mixture of hope and desperation in his parents’ eyes; the compassion felt for the wounded soldiers lying in hospital beds, some of whom could not remember their past; the sympathetic expressions and attempts by these young men to provide clues and tidbits of wisdom to my grandparents. As my Dad reflected recently in a sermon he gave on biblical hospitality, this went on for more than a year:

Two words describe that fateful 15 months after the crash before my brother’s body was found and identified. They are “hope and hospitality.” My parents – especially my mother – always felt that Ted would come walking in the front door someday. In her own way, she prepared for that delightful moment by keeping his clothes cleaned and ready for him while secretly planning a “welcome home” party. Even after Ted was declared legally dead a year later, my parents still looked for him in the Bowery in [New York City], the “tenderloin district” in Philadelphia, and other urban cities where the homeless gathered, and she soon started the practice of carrying small packages of food to distribute to many of those who appeared without hope. No matter what – both hope and hospitality kept my parents going.

There is a Latin phrase, carpe diem, made famous in the movie Dead Poets Society, which translated means “seize the day”. The phrase comes from Horace, in Odes Book I: Dum loquimur, fugerit invida Aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero: “While we're talking, envious time is fleeing: seize the day, put no trust in the future.” Whether or not intended for young men going off to war, it is a warning that, unless you make the most of life now, you may never have the chance to experience life in all its dimensions. To feel love and loss, joy and pain, all of the things that allows us to know we are alive. Too often, we muddle through our daily routines focused on the task at hand, failing to inhale life, to live in the moment and appreciate the uniqueness of each day. For each moment that passes is forever lost in time.

When I think of Ted and his unfulfilled dreams and passions lost, I question whether I have really embraced the opportunity to ponder life and all its wonder. Have I breathed deeply and smelled the fresh scent of a rosebud on a spring morning? Have I appreciated the sun as it breaks through the crisp winter air, the blue sky painting the background, laced with cotton-like white clouds? Have I examined the moon on a clear night, searched for the constellations in the expanse of the universe, or appreciated the peacefulness of a silent snowfall?

Ted was one of over 416,000 Americans who died in World War II, a war in which the world suffered 60 million deaths. I am immensely proud of my Uncle Ted and all of his compatriots who fought in that war. Until a greater national cause arrives upon the American scene, Ted and his cohorts will remain the Greatest Generation. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in The Insecurity of Freedom (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1959), “Freedom presupposes the capacity for sacrifice.” Ted and his crewmates sacrificed so that we may carry on in a free and prosperous land, so that we may experience life. On my wall is a framed certificate of recognition from President Harry Truman, honoring Ted’s death. On it is written:

He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared serve to die that freedom might live, and grow, and increase its blessings. Freedom lives, and through it, he lives – in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.

When I think of Ted and the sacrifice he paid, I feel the humility to which President Truman referred. As it pains me to consider what might have been, there is comfort in believing that, in our freedom, Ted and his band of brothers continue to live. Yet as I write, on Christmas Eve, part of the world prepares to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. I cannot help but consider the dichotomy of our existence, the hypocrisy of our actions as a people. There is a part of me that insists on asking whether Ted, and the other valiant and courageous young men who died and fought alongside of him, were victims – of the failure of humanity and the incapacity of the human heart. I have acknowledged more than once that war is sometimes necessary – as it no doubt was in Ted’s lifetime – but no one will ever convince me that war is anything but inherently evil.

Hold fast to dreams / For if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird / That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams / For when dreams go / Life is a barren field / Frozen with snow. --Langston Hughes (“Dreams”)

Here is wishing all a time of peace and dreams fulfilled; seize the day and make the most of life, always recognizing those who have sacrificed for our freedoms, whose lives were abruptly and unfairly cut short, their dreams unfulfilled. As Heschel noted, “Modern man continues to ponder: What will I get out of life? What escapes his attention is the fundamental, yet forgotten question: What will life get out of me?”