Learning from the Indomitable Mother Jones

For some reason, I have never known much about the indomitable woman known as Mother Jones. But noticing that she died 90 years ago, on November 30, 1930, I decided to read some about her and to share some of what I discovered about that most remarkable woman. 

Mother Jones, 1924

Learning about Mother Jones

In her autobiography published in 1925, Mary Harris Jones claimed that she was born in Ireland on May 1, 1830. Well, the country is correct, but the date probably isn’t. Most likely she was born shortly before her Catholic parents had her baptized on August 1, 1837.

In the late 1840s, Richard Harris, Mary’s father, emigrated to the U.S. and then a couple of years later Mary’s mother and siblings joined him in Canada where he was then working.

By 1861, Mary had moved to Memphis, and the next ten years were filled with joy and tragedy. In that Tennessee city, Mary married George Jones and in the next five years they had four children. But then in 1867, George and all four of their children died of yellow fever.

Mary then moved to Chicago and started a dressmaking business, only to lose it and most of her possessions in the Great Fire of 1871.

In the 1870s, Mary Jones became affiliated with the Knights of Labor (KoL) and became lifelong friends with Terence Powderly (1849~1924) who was the Grand Master Workman of KoL from 1879 to '93.

After the demise of KoL in 1893, Mary became heavily involved with the United Mine Workers. When she began working for that fledgling union in the 1890s, it had 10,000 members; within a few years, 300,000 men had joined, and it became the largest union in the U.S.

Claiming to be older than she actually was, Mary started being called Mother Jones by 1897.

Her tireless work, and success, in organizing strikes for the betterment of working conditions for miners and other laboring people prompted a West Virginia district attorney in 1902 to call her “the most dangerous woman in America.”

The danger, though, was to the wealthy mine owners and others who profited off the labor of their insufficiently paid workers. By contrast, for some fifty years she was instrumental in helping improve the working and living conditions for common laborers across the United States.

Mother Jones’s funeral in 1930 was held at a Catholic church in Washington, D.C. She was then buried in Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive, Illinois, after she was honored with another funeral Mass in that small Illinois town.

Learning from Mother Jones

Here are some important lessons we today can learn from the indomitable Mother Jones:

** Pressing on in spite of adversity. The five years between 1867 and 1871 was a terrible time for Mary Harris Jones. Can you imagine losing four children, your spouse, your business, and all your possessions in the space of five years?

And yet, Mary pressed on becoming increasingly involved in seeking to help others. In spite of her personal tragedies, for nearly fifty years she lived mostly to help the working poor across the country. What an inspiration!

** Recognizing that “silence is violence.” The lifework of Mother Jones, a lifelong Catholic, is expressed in these oft-quoted words of hers: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” She was a woman who wouldn’t keep silent, even though harassed and jailed repeatedly.

** Expressing faith in deeds, not words. Although a Christian, Mother Jones was not a “pious” churchwoman and seemingly didn’t talk a lot about her faith. But her indefatigable activity for others was in harmony with the kinds of things Jesus noted in Matthew 25:31~40 about his true followers.

These are just three of the many things we might learn from Mary Harris Jones, who probably did more for laboring people than any other woman in the history of the U.S.

*****

Links: Here is the link to the Mother Jones Museum website, which has a wealth of information about Jones.

Also, see this link to access Mother Jones, the politically progressive/liberal magazine that was founded in 1976 and named in honor of Mary Harris Jones. 

Advocating the Radiant Center

On this day before the American Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful that I am in the last stage of publishing the updated and slightly revised edition of my book The Limits of Liberalism. This post is based on the concluding chapter of that book. 

What is the Radiant Center?

In The Limits of Liberalism, I repeatedly call for a position between the “extremes” of the liberal Christian left as well as the “extremes” of the conservative evangelical Christian right. I struggled, though, with what to call the envisioned theological position between the polar opposites.

One term I seriously considered was “radical center,” a term used by Adam Hamilton, the Methodist megachurch pastor in greater Kansas City. Hamilton wrote about that in his book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White (2008).

Hamilton used the words “radical center” as a term that is “able to hold together the best of the right and the left” (p. 232). It is the position that “seeks to build bridges rather than walls, and refuses to be the wedge in anyone’s theological or culture wars” (p. 235).

But because of the baggage born by the term “radical” and the general unattractiveness of the color gray, I decided to call the position Hamilton was promoting, and which I badly want, the radiant center.

The center between the extremes of black and white doesn’t have to be gray. Rather, it can be a brilliant blue, a gorgeous green, or a rousing red. Yes, a radiant center.

Who Is Included in the Radiant Center?

As I envision it, the radiant center is composed of both progressive evangelicals and conservative liberals as well as all those in between. Moreover, it has ever-widening boundaries, becoming more and more inclusive.

Not everyone, however, is included, or wants to be included, in the center. So, I am not advocating a radical center that includes everyone. I still want, though, to be open to dialogue with those who are not a part of the envisioned center, and I don’t want to exclude anyone from friendship.

While I certainly want to have “malice toward none and charity for all,” not everyone is included in the radiant center because, frankly, some don’t want to be grouped with people with whom they have serious theological disagreements.

The radiant center can’t include those who are not willing to accept and affirm those with quite different beliefs; that is, the radiant center can’t accept “fundamentalists” of the right or the left, that is, those who think that they, and only they, are right.

Advocating the Radiant Center

I close my book by strongly advocating the radiant center as I envision it.

The radiant center radiates the heat (passion and compassion) and light of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the gospel about Jesus.

The radiant center is generous, for it spreads out to warm and enlighten everyone within its reach. Its effects radiate out to all alike, to the right and the left and to those not even on the spectrum.

The radiant center is progressive. While it may not go to the extremes of some contemporary liberal Christianity, neither will it be constrained to the confines of much Christian conservative evangelicalism.

Here, then, is how I close Limits of Liberalism:

I pray that other Christians who are fed up with fundamentalism but who are also aware of the limits of liberalism will join me in searching for, affirming, and then helping to build a radiant center for contemporary Christian faith.

Will you join me in this endeavor?

In Memory of Leo Tolstoy

It was 110 years ago today that Count Lev Nikolayevich (Leo) Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer, died at the age of 82, a month younger than I am now—and except for the mustache, my covid-19 pandemic beard now looks much like his as seen in the following picture taken near the end of his life. 

Remembering Tolstoy as a Novelist

Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828, about 200 kilometers south of Moscow. The third son of a landowning aristocrat, he inherited an estate consisting of a huge manor house and property with nearly 500 serfs.

After spending his young manhood in profligacy, in 1851 he joined the Russian army. He was an artillery officer during the Crimean War and was a part of the forces the British light brigade charged against, as described in my Oct. 20 post.

Reacting negatively toward that war, Tolstoy left the army and after traveling around Europe for a while, he began founding schools for peasant children in Russia. During the 1850s, even while still a soldier, he began to write novellas.

In the next decade, then, Tolstoy became a full-fledged novelist. War and Peace, his first, and very long and complicated, major novel, was published in 1869. It was followed by another lengthy novel, Anna Karenina, published in 1878.

Tolstoy wrote many novellas and literary works of many kinds, but his only other major novel was Resurrection, which was not published until 1899. Yes, with just three major works, and the third not widely read, Tolstoy is still recognized as one of the best novelists the world has ever seen.

Remembering Tolstoy as a Christian

Although baptized and brought up in the Russian Orthodox Church, Tolstoy wrote that by the age of 18 he had “lost all belief in what I had been taught.” Those are words from Confession (1882), the book he wrote in his early 50s about becoming a follower of Jesus Christ.

So, for the last 30 years of his life, Tolstoy lived and wrote as a Christian believer—but not as a member of the Orthodox Church, which, in fact, excommunicated him in 1901.

Tolstoy’s writings during those years were largely of a man who sought to follow the teachings of Jesus, especially as found in the Sermon on the Mount.

Selections of Tolstoy’s Christian writings are published in a 325-page book under the title The Gospel in Tolstoy (2015), and I much enjoyed reading that book this fall.

“My Way to Faith,” the fourth chapter, is an excerpt from Confession in which Tolstoy wrote, “As long as I know God, I live.” Also, “To know God and to live come to one and the same thing. God is life.”

Chapter 20 is “What Is the Meaning of Life?” from one of Tolstoy’s most theological writings, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).

Remembering Tolstoy as a Teacher 

Although Tolstoy was never a teacher in a formal sense, through his writings some of the world’s best-known people, and a multitude of unknown people, have learned important lessons from him.

Tolstoy became an important teacher for Mahatma Gandhi, for Martin Luther King Jr., and for Dorothy Day. And although certainly not widely known, he was also a teacher for Nishida Tenko-san, the subject of my 2/24/13 blog post, and I encourage you to (re)read that post.

Actually, Tolstoy has had much influence in Japan and is still seen as a trustworthy teacher there. In 2018 a Japanese woman published an article titled “What Today’s Youth Can Learn From the Great Russian Writer Leo Tolstoy.” She mentions Nishida (1872~1968) in her thoughtful article.

So, even though he died 110 years ago, Tolstoy is still remembered and honored as a brilliant writer—and as one who by his life and writings taught what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

Elections Have Consequences: 1844 and 2020

James K. Polk, the 11^th President, was born on November 2, 1795. As mentioned in my Oct. 30 post, Polk’s 125^th birthday anniversary in 1920 was the day when Warren G. Harding celebrated his 55^th birthday—and was also elected the 29^th POTUS.

Polk, elected in November 1844, was a successful President. His four years in office clearly indicates that elections have consequences—as they all do. 

Polk: One of the Best Presidents?

Presidential historian Andrew Bergen ranks Polk as the seventh best President of the first 43 in the history of the U.S. (see here). That is higher than what is found in most rankings, but Polk is regularly ranked in the top one-third. And yet, he is not widely known—although ten states have a county named for James Polk.

(Polk County, Missouri, where June was born and where we were married, was named after James’s grandfather. And now we live in Clay County, Mo., named after Henry Clay, whom Polk defeated in the election of 1844. My 4/20/17 blog post was titled “The Feats of [Henry] Clay,” and mentions his loss to Polk.)

Harry Truman summed up Polk’s legacy in these words: “James K. Polk, a great President. Said what he intended to do and did it.” Accordingly, Bergen states, “Polk followed through on every single campaign pledge that he ran on in 1844,” and that included not running for re-election.  

Election Consequences of 1844

But Polk’s “successful” presidency doesn’t mean that we should broadly praise him. Rather, there is much that should be denounced. Elections have consequences, and those consequences from the 1844 election were not good for many people in the U.S.

Polk is regarded as a protégé of Andrew Jackson, instigator of the deplorable Indian Removal Act of 1830, and that is one reason the consequences of the election of 1844 were not good for many. He was a strong advocate of “manifest destiny” (a term coined in 1845) that resulted in the extermination of many Native Americans.

Further, the annexation of Texas, which he strongly supported, was linked to the strengthening of slavery in the U.S., for annexation gave slavery room to expand. Subsequently, one indirect consequence of Polk’s election was the Civil War, which started just twelve years after his presidency ended.

Election Consequences of 2020?

The guest host on the Nov. 9 Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC kept repeating the words “radical normalcy” with reference to President-elect Joe Biden. That is one of the hoped-for consequences of this month’s election—a reversal of the abnormalities I wrote about in my 10/30 post and that this very lengthy WaPo Magazine article details.

Just as he promised, President-elect Biden has already set up a panel of experts to draw up plans on how best to find ways to control the covid-19 pandemic. And as an indication of the “radical normalcy” in that move, there were no family members or cronies selected for the team.

As a Nov. 9 WaPo article says, Biden’s appointed task force is “a group made up entirely of doctors and health experts, signaling his intent to seek a science-based approach to bring the raging pandemic under control.” This will surely lead to one very positive consequence of the Nov. 3 election.

Further, according to this Nov. 11 WaPo article, another encouraging consequence of the recent election is how “Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change.”

Of course, some evangelical Christians see negative consequences resulting from the election. For example, on Nov. 10, a conservative Christian Post reporter declared, “Biden planning to reverse Trump’s pro-life policies by executive order.”

It remains to be seen, of course, what all the consequences of the 2020 presidential election will be. I am hoping for, and expect, mostly positive ones that will, indeed, help save the soul of the nation.

Life: A Brief Candle or a Splendid Torch?

With the presidential election in the U.S. apparently settled, our attention can now be given to other, more important personal matters—such as the meaning of life and how to live.

Life as a Brief Candle

Contending with Romeo and Juliet as well as Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is regularly ranked as one of his bests plays. Consider this oft-quoted passage in that tragedy: In Act V, Scene V, King Macbeth exclaims,

Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

What a negative, even cynical, view of life!

While unlikely to express themselves so eloquently, I’m afraid Macbeth’s words, sadly, characterize the way many contemporaries see life.

Life as a Splendid Torch

Regularly rated among British dramatists as second only to Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw was an interesting and complex character about whom I have mixed feelings.

There is much that is objectionable in Shaw, who was born in 1856 and died 75 years ago, in November 1950. For example, he promoted eugenics and opposed organized religion.

But I have been impressed by these words of Shaw:

In the sentence before those notable words, Shaw declared, “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.”

Perhaps the impact of that statement is lessened somewhat when we realize that he wrote them in 1907, the year he turned 51. But he did live a long and productive life, writing his last full-length play in 1948, at the age of 92, and a short play the year of his death.

Life as Both a Brief Candle and a Splendid Torch

In numerous sermons through the years, I have cited James 4:14 (in the New Testament): “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (NRSV).

That verse resonates with Macbeth’s view of life as a brief candle, although in context it certainly doesn’t see life as signifying nothing.

J. Mike Minnix is a Baptist pastor in North Carolina, and in a 2012 sermon based on James 4:14, he stated, “You will never live your life as you should unless you recognize how quickly your life is passing.”

Pastor Minnix then quoted Psalm 90:12 – “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Following his example, I calculated how many days I have already lived.

The number of my days is now 30,039. That is a lot of days! And I might even live another 4,000 more days, which would take me to a couple of months past my 93^rd birthday. Or maybe not.

Even the biggest candles eventually burn up. Accordingly, although I have lived more than 30,000 days, I do recognize that, indeed, that life is short.

Regardless of how many, or how few, days I have left, though, I want to be like Shaw and to “burn as brightly as possible” for as long as possible.

Rather than spending most of my time thinking and talking about the past, as we oldsters are inclined to do, I want to keep thinking about the future and about what (little) I can do to help create a better world for my grandchildren.

In that regard I want to keep taking seriously the words of Shaw that were slightly paraphrased and made widely known by Bobby Kennedy in the years before his untimely death (brief candle, indeed!) in 1968: 

TTT (Things Take Time)

For many years, I have used the abbreviation TTT for my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018)—and I still encourage people to read that book. But this post is about a different meaning of TTT, one that I learned from a Japanese friend decades ago: things take time. 

The Presidential Election: TTT

As everyone knows, the U.S. elections were held two days ago, on November 3. But the results of the presidential election are not certain even now, although it is most likely that the Biden/Harris ticket will narrowly win.

The election results for most states won’t be “officially certified” until November 23 or later. And actually, the result of the presidential election is not official until January 6, the day a joint session of Congress meets to count electoral votes (cast on December 18) and declare the winner.

Things take time, and this year it is taking a much longer time than usual for the apparent results of the presidential election to be ascertained—and who knows what will happen between now and Dec. 18 or Jan. 6.

There will be recounts, lawsuits, angry tweets, and falsehoods told by the likely loser, who late on election night made numerous false and misleading statements in speaking to his supporters (see here).

The Return to Normalcy: TTT

As I wrote in my previous (Oct. 30) blog post, the election of Joe Biden would be the beginning of a return to normalcy as the many abnormalities I mentioned in that post—and that was by no means a complete list—would be righted.

However, even if Biden is inaugurated on January 20, current adverse conditions in the nation won’t get better immediately. Things take time.

The ongoing effects of the pandemic, the lingering economic/unemployment challenges for many, and current cynicism about government, etc. will take a long time to overcome and for there to be a sense of normalcy again.

Some, no doubt, will be disappointed, feeling that change/recovery is happening too slowly. There will likely be criticism of the new administration for not doing enough fast enough.

But, again, things take time—and patience seems to be much more difficult for us USAmericans than for the people of Japan, whose national beginning is said to have been in 660 BCE, a very long time before 1776.

The Re-building of Environmental Protection: TTT

Over the past nearly four years, we have seen much that has been wrecked in this country—and it takes much longer to build, or re-build, something than to wreck it.

The lead article in the October 31 issue of The Economist reports, “Of the 225 major executive actions in a studiously catalogued list of the Trump administration’s deregulation 70 . . . are environmental rollbacks.”

With broader criteria, an articlein the Oct. 30 Washington Post claims that “as Trump’s first term winds to a close, he has weakened or wiped out more than 125 rules and policies aimed at protecting the nation’s air, water and land, with 40 more rollbacks underway.”

There are numerous critical challenges that the new President faces. Of immediate urgency, of course, is controlling the spread of the covid-19 pandemic and dealing with the lingering problems caused by it.

But perhaps the biggest challenge, the one that is most critical for the future well-being of the country and the world, is re-building programs necessary for protecting the environment—and then taking bold measures to combat global warming.

Things take time—but dealing wisely and effectively with environmental issues is something that needs to be done sooner rather than later.