A Return to Normalcy?

No one in this country is unaware that next Tuesday, November 3, is Election Day. Many U.S. citizens have already voted, but what result can we expect from the presidential election? Can we expect a return to normalcy? 

Is this also Decision 2020?

Past Appeals for Normalcy

In his campaign for the presidency in 1920, Warren G. Harding’s slogan was “return to normalcy.” On May 14, he made his famous “Return to Normalcy” speech that included these words:

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; . . . .”

That sentiment proved to be an effective and fruitful appeal to the American voters, who were ready to move back to “normal” after the disastrous “Great War” and the equally disastrous effects of the Spanish flu.

On November 2, which happened to be his 55th birthday, Harding was elected, receiving over 60% of the popular vote, the highest percentage in a presidential election up to that time.

While the same words were not used, there was some similarity with Dwight D. Eisenhower’s campaign of 1952. There was no pandemic just before that election, but the effects of WWII were still being felt, and then the Korean War had been raging since 1950. Many hoped for a return to normalcy.

Eisenhower won that election with over 55% of the popular vote and over 83% of the electoral votes.

In “What Joe Can Learn from Ike,” a perceptive 10/10/20 article in The Atlantic, author Ted Widmer points out that “Eisenhower instinctively understood how deeply Americans wanted to calm down and get back to normal.”

Accordingly, Widmer states, Ike “pursued a policy of strategic blandness.” That was a successful strategy, for as noted, he won by a landslide.

Present Need for Normalcy

This is a time of considerable abnormality in the USA. As in much of the rest of the world, the covid-19 pandemic has greatly altered the normal activities of most Americans and taken the lives of more than 230,000—and at present, the situation is steadily getting worse, not better.

But perhaps the greatest abnormality is linked to the man occupying the White House. Without elaboration, here are some of the most blatant abnormalities associated with DJT.

** It is abnormal for a President to lie so much.

** It is abnormal for a President to seek political help from the heads of other countries, especially those who head a totalitarian government.

** It is abnormal for a President to have so many family members working in the White House.

** It is abnormal for a sitting President and his family to profit financially so much while in office.

** It is abnormal for a President to be so disrespectful of women, Blacks and other People of Color, immigrants and asylum seekers from other countries.

** It is abnormal for a President to expect the Department of Justice to serve his personal and political interests.

** It is abnormal for a President to be personally involved in the celebration of a new Supreme Court justice.

** Etc.

Future Hope for Normalcy

Many of us are eagerly hoping for the election next week to be the beginning of a return to normalcy in this country. Such a return would not happen immediately, though. Things take time, and I plan to write more about that next week.

It will certainly take many more months for life to return to anything like normal because of the covid-19 pandemic.

But I am hopeful that next week will be the beginning of a return to an administration committed to truthfulness; to respect for, and the endeavor to seek the well-being of, all citizens; and to civility.

Maybe the USA was never fully like that, though, so instead of a return to normalcy my main hope and prayer is for the beginning of a much-needed new normal that embraces, among other things, truthfulness, respect, and civility.

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FYI: November 2 was also the birthday of James K. Polk, the 11^th POTUS. The election of 1844 was from November 1 until December 4, although Polk is said to have won the election on November 5.

Following the example of Heather Cox Richardson, I am posting below some hyperlinks to articles directly related to what I have written above.

“Trump is averaging more than 50 false or misleading claims a day” (WaPo, 10/22)

“Ballrooms, candles and luxury cottages: During Trump’s term, millions of government and GOP dollars have flowed to his properties” (WaPo, 10/27)

“Former U.S. attorneys — all Republicans — back Biden, saying Trump threatens ‘the rule of law’” (WaPo, 10/27)

“All the small things you can look forward to in a Biden administration” (WaPo, 10/27)

 

Confessions of a Missionary

“The Limits of Liberal Views of World Missions” is the title of the ninth chapter of my book The Limits of Liberalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism (2010), which I am updating and slightly revising for re-publication at year’s end. 

This post is related to the subject of that next-to-last chapter of the book, but it is mainly the confessions of a missionary, who happens to be me. 

Confessing Shame over Missionary Mistakes

In Chapter Nine, I sadly indicate some of the mistakes made by many missionaries of the past, mistakes that are widely, and for good reason, criticized especially in liberal Christian circles.

From the last of the 15^th century, Christianity was largely spread by means of the imperialistic activities of European nations.

“God, guns, and gold” were linked: the activities of missionaries were often forerunners of, or concomitant with, the military forces that secured foreign wealth for the powerful countries of Europe. Spanish missionary Junípero Serra, whom I wrote about on Oct. 5, was just one example of many.

Early Protestant missionaries such as William Carey, “the father of modern (Protestant) missions,” and early missionaries such as Ann and Adoniram Judson were not linked with imperialistic power, but unfortunately, many of their successors in the 19^th century were.

I confess that I am ashamed of much that has been done by missionaries in the past, although the same sort of activities are, thankfully, rarely seen in the present.

Confessing Lack of Missionary Success

On a more personal level, I confess that I was not particularly successful as a missionary to Japan from 1966 to 2004—and sadly, most of the missionaries to Japan over the last 60 years would have to make a similar confession.

Traditionally, overseas missionaries have been popularly pictured as living in poor countries and having to cope with challenging living conditions. That certainly wasn’t true for those of us who served in Japan after, say, 1965.

The challenge we regularly faced was how to deal with the sense of failure in what we were sent there to do. In contrast to the first 20 years after WWII, those of us missionaries who went to Japan after 1965 have to confess that, to a large part, we saw scant success from our efforts.

(I would be happy to respond to questions concerning this matter.)

“Confessing” Joy from a Missionary Career

“Liberal” Christians have long held a dim view of missionary activity, and I have personally seen a shift in attitudes toward missionaries. During my family’s second missionary “furlough,” as it was called then, we lived in a house generously provided by Second Baptist Church here in Liberty.

That year of 1976-77 was a good year for our family and we were well treated and supported by the church. Then, in 2005 after retiring from our missionary work in Japan, we bought a house in Liberty and that fall became members again of Second Baptist Church.

It was a bit of a shock when I began to sense negative feelings toward missionaries by some—and only by a very few—members of the church. They seemed to think that missionary work was wrongheaded, and the implication was that June and I had wasted our lives being missionaries.

Nevertheless, the last part of the ninth chapter of my book is titled “Reaffirmation of the Christian Mission,” and in it I contend that “world missions” is legitimate and that the rejection of such is a major weakness of Christian liberalism.

And even though I don’t say so directly in the book, I have to “confess” that in spite of the criticism of missionary activity by some, I count it a great joy to have been able to serve as a missionary for 38 years—and I appreciate the support of Southern Baptists during those years.

If I had it all to do over again, I would unhesitatingly choose to do the same thing—although I would, I hope, do it a little better the second time around.

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For more about my thought on this topic, see “#13  Missionary Activity Is Still Legitimate And Important” in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018) and my May 20, 2018 blog article based on that chapter.

The Peril of Blind Allegiance

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

I had long known those words from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854), but I didn’t realize until doing research for my May 10 blog article on Florence Nightingale that that “charge” was during an October 1854 battle in the Crimean War. 

By Richard Caton Woodville, Jr. (1894)

The Battle of Balaklava

The Crimean War was waged between October 1853 and February 1856. It was between the Russians on one side and the British, French, and Ottoman Turks on the other.

A major event in the war was the siege of Sevastopol, the home of a major fleet of Russian ships and currently the largest city in Crimea. The siege lasted for nearly a year beginning on September 25, 1854.

Balaclava, now a part of the city of Sevastopol, was the site of the calamitous charge of the British light brigade on October 25.

It was calamitous (according to this article), for the British cavalry charged “needlessly to their doom under the muddled and misinformed orders of their superiors.”

The British Light Brigade

A brigade is a military unit and the “light brigade” in the battle of Balaklava was the British cavalry force mounted on light, fast horses that were unarmored.

On that fateful day in October 1854, the light brigade was missent to attack a Russian artillery battery for which they were ill-equipped to confront, and the assault ended with very high British casualties.

Just a little over six weeks later, Tennyson’s poem was published, and it said of the light brigade,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

The Peril of Blind Allegiance

Tennyson’s powerful poem seems to glorify the bravery of the cavalrymen. But doesn’t it also point out the peril of blind allegiance? Why should they be praised for riding into “the valley of Death” even though they knew “Someone had blundered”?

Blind allegiance is a characteristic of those who become followers of a cult, defined as “a group of people with extreme dedication to a certain leader or set of beliefs that are often expressed as an excessive and misplaced admiration for someone or something.”

One of the best-known examples of a cult and the destructiveness of blind allegiance is that of the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones.

In November 1978, over 900 people of that cult who had moved with Jones to Jonestown, Guyana, literally “drank the Kool-Aid” (which was really Flavor Aid) in an act of mass murder/suicide. This was an act of blind allegiance that was much more deadly than that of the British light brigade in 1854.

A religious cult with vastly more members, but much less destructive to this point, is the Unification Church which was founded in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon in South Korea.

Steven Hassan, who was 19 at the time, joined the Unification Church in 1974. A few years later he left that group, and following the Jonestown mass suicide and murders, in 1979 Hassan founded a non-profit organization called "Ex-Moon Inc." He has been fighting cults ever since.

Last year Hassan published a book titled The Cult of Trump. (There can be and are political cults as well as religious ones.) 

There are, naturally, those who object to referring to DJT’s most ardent followers as being part of a Trump cult. (See here, for example.)

Still, a majority (55%) of Republicans for whom Fox News is their primary news source say there is nothing Trump could do to lose their approval (bolding added; from PRRI on 10/19). That sounds very much like what members of a cult would say.

To such people I want to say, Beware of the peril of blind allegiance. You need to reason why and not be willing just to do and die.

Notes by a St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Fan

Partly because of the recent deaths of two of my baseball heroes and also because of the need for a change of pace from thinking about political issues, this blog post is about baseball. Specifically, it is about the St. Louis Cardinals, whose games I started listening to more than 70 years ago. 

Notes from the Late ’40s and Early ’50s

Growing up on a farm in the 1940s without television (or video games!), radio was the primary source of outside entertainment, and when I was ten or eleven years old I started listening to St. Louis Cardinals baseball games.

The Cardinals games were on KFEQ, AM 680, the St. Joseph radio station. When I first started listening, the games were narrated by an announcer reading printouts from a teletype machine. I can’t remember when live broadcasts began. But, regardless, I was a Cardinals fan from the late ’40s.

As I wrote back in June 2016, the first Cardinals game I attended was at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis on June 14, 1951. Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst, my two favorite players, both got two hits—and at the end of the game were batting .376 and .340. (Here is the box score of that game.)

Although I have no memory of taking any note of him at the time, Jackie Robinson played that day—and hit a double, ending the day with a .365 batting average. Ralph Branca, who appears several times in the movie “42,” was the starting pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers that day.

Notes from the Mid-’60s and Early ’70s

After 1963, the year when both Musial and Schoendienst played their final year with the Cardinals, my favorite players were three outstanding African Americans: Bob Gibson (1935~2020), Curt Flood (1938~97), and Lou Brock (1939~2020).

I was saddened when I heard last month that Brock had passed away on September 6, and then saddened again when I learned that Gibson had died on October 2 at the age of 84.

Gibson, Flood, and Brock played together on the Cardinals teams from 1964 to 1968, and in those five years the Cards won the National League pennant three times and the World Series in 1964 and 1967. (And Schoendienst was the manager during the years of 1965~68.)

I especially remember the World Series of 1964, for that was the first time the Cardinals had been in the Series since I first became a fan in the late ’40s. (Their previous World Series had been in 1946.)

A few years later, Gibson pitched the only no-hitter of his storied career on August 14, 1971. My family and I were then back in the States for a year, and I listened to the last part of that game driving back to my parents’ house after visiting an old high school and college friend.

Even though I was only able to hear it on the radio, still it was a thrill to listen to the final innings of that memorable game.

Notes about Flood’s Lawsuit

This article was triggered by “Why this is the year baseball should correct its mistake and put Curt Flood in the Hall of Fame,” a WaPo opinion piece by two U.S. Congressmen, James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and David Trone (D-Md.).

Curt Flood (1938~97)

Flood was traded by the Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in October 1969—but he refused to go. He thought he was being treated as a well-paid slave, and that became the title of a book by Brad Snyder, A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports (2006). 

In December 1969, Flood sent a scathing letter to Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Demanding free agency, Flood wrote:

I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several states.

In January 1970, Flood filed a $1 million lawsuit against Kuhn and Major League Baseball, alleging violation of federal antitrust laws.

Flood’s suit went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1972, but he lost in a 5-3 decision. Just three years later, though, free agency, such as Flood sought, was recognized by the courts.

Snyder describes in his book how and why Flood had a greater impact on baseball than any other player of our time.

I am happy to have been one of Flood’s many fans during his glory days with the Cardinals.

What To Do about a White Jesus?

Earlier this year I wrote about removing Confederate statues, and my previous post was about toppling statues of the Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra. But now I tackle an even harder question: what should be done about the statues—and stained-glass windows—of a white Jesus?

The Popularity of a White Jesus

By far, the most famous painting of Jesus is Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ.” Sallman (1892~1968) completed that painting in 1940, and in the 80 years since, some say it has been reproduced a billion times. 

News stories this year about Sallman’s painting have been titled “How Jesus became white” (see here, for example), but there were a multitude of paintings and stained-glass windows depicting a white Jesus long before 1940.

From the late 16th century until the early 20th century, Raphael’s “The Transfiguration” (1520) was the most famous oil painting in the world, and Jesus is clearly “white” and with blond hair. (See Anna House’s 7/17/20 essay, “The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European.”)

The Problem of a White Jesus

Eminent Black theologian James Cone highlighted the problem of a white Jesus in his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011): “The White Christ gave blacks slavery, segregation, and lynching and told them to turn the other cheek and to look for their reward in heaven” (p. 115).

Partly for reasons noted by Cone (1938~2018), according to a June 22 Newsweek article, Shaun King, an American writer, civil rights activist, and co-founder of the Real Justice PAC, has insisted that “White Jesus statues should be torn down.”

King (b. 1979) also asserted that stained glass windows and other images of a white Jesus should be destroyed, insisting that they are “racist propaganda” and “a gross form of white supremacy.”

In his hard-hitting 2019 book Dear Church, Lenny Duncan, a Black Lutheran pastor, writes about how he and other Blacks have been hurt by the prevalent symbol of “a white Norwegian Jesus” (p. 68).

Kelly Brown Douglas, Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Seminary in New York, writes in the October 7 issue of The Christian Century about “Struggling with Black faith in America.”

Dean Douglas says that as a girl, the Jesus of her Sunday school lessons ”was always pictured as White. This fact alone made me skeptical of his love for me.”

Further, she writes, “How could a White Jesus ever care about me, not to speak of caring for poor Black children? And how could I, a Black person, ever have faith in a White Jesus?”

Douglas goes on to say that as she was “experiencing an agonizing crisis of faith,” she was introduced to Cone’s book A Black Theology of Liberation (1970)—and the content of that book was definitely liberating for her.

“I could be Black with a love for Jesus without contradiction, because in fact Jesus was Black like me,” she realized.

What To Do about a White Jesus?

Since the summer of 2019, I have served as the chair of my church’s Worship Committee. Most of this year has been hard because of not being able to have in-person worship services.

Unexpectedly, our committee was confronted with the problem of what to do, if anything, about the large stained-glass window in our sanctuary. It quite clearly portrays a white Jesus, as you can see in this picture: 

Our church building was acquired from the Methodists, and when it was remodeled in the early 2000s the stained-glass window was re-done—but there was no change to the Scandinavian appearance of Jesus.

We continue to wrestle with the question, What should be done about the White Jesus in our stained-glass window?

What advice would you give me and my committee?

Junípero Serra: A Sorry Saint

Even though he has little name recognition in most circles, this article is about a man of considerable importance in the history of California and of marked religious interest since he was canonized by Pope Francis five years ago on September 23, 2015. 

Who Was Junípero Serra?

Miguel José Serra was born in November 1713 on the Spanish island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean Sea. When he took his vows to become a Franciscan priest in 1737, Serra took the name Junípero, which was the name of one of St. Francis’s devoted friends.

From his childhood, Serra dreamed of becoming a missionary. After teaching philosophy for several years in Spain, in 1749 he finally was able to make the 6,000-mile trip to Mexico and to begin missionary work there.

On December 15 of that year, Father Serra and another priest started walking from the coastal city of Veracruz to Mexico City, some 260 miles away. On the journey, he was bitten by a mosquito and his left foot became infected. He suffered for the rest of his life from that malady.

Serra spent 38½ years as a missionary in Mexico, Baja California, and in what was then known as Alta California. He died in what is now Monterey County, California, in August 1784 at the age of 70.

The Noble Junípero Serra

Serra’s main claim to fame is as the founder of nine “missions” along the coast of California, from San Diego de Alcalá (in 1769) in the south to San Francisco de Asís (in 1776) on the north. The current cities of San Diego and San Francisco, of course, grew out of Serra’s missions.

In 1769, it is estimated that there were around 300,000 Native Americans in what is now California. Through the indefatigable efforts of Serra and his co-workers, about one-third of those became Roman Catholics.

Because of his meritorious missionary work, Serra became the first Hispanic person to be canonized—by the first Hispanic Pope in the first canonization mass held in the United States.

Even though he was a Franciscan priest and missionary, Serra is sometimes called “the father of California” (see here, for example). Pope Francis has said that he sees Serra as “one of the founding fathers of the United States.” Many Californians through the years have agreed.

As you probably know, each state chooses statues of two of the most important persons in their states to stand in the U.S. Capitol Building. California’s statues are of Ronald Regan and the noble Junípero Serra.

The Ignoble Junípero Serra

There are many who disagree with Serra’s adulation, however. At the time of his canonization, there were serious protests in California, especially by Native Americans. Serra’s statue in a city park in Monterey was decapitated at that time. 

Interestingly, in sympathy with the protests against Confederate statues this year, Serra’s monuments again became targets of protest. On June 19 activists pulled down a Serra statue in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, and the next day, a Serra statue in Los Angeles was toppled. 

A 9/29/15 New York Times article frankly states, “Historians agree that [Serra] forced Native Americans to abandon their tribal culture and convert to Christianity, and that he had them whipped and imprisoned and sometimes worked or tortured to death.”

Ten weeks before Serra’s canonization, Pope Francis publicly apologized for the “grave sins” of colonialism against Indigenous Peoples of America. But that did not keep him from following through with his making Serra a saint.

Although there is much to admire about Junípero Serra, it was probably a mistake for him to be canonized—but since he was, it is fitting to call Serra a sorry saint.

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Dan Horan is a Franciscan priest and a theology professor whom I cited at some length in my August 25 blog post. On July 8 he had a thought-provoking article largely about Serra in the National Catholic Reporter, and I recommend the careful reading of that perceptive article titled “The preferential option for the removal of statues.”