The Woman Who Worked for God and FDR

In February 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the newly elected President, came to see a woman about becoming the labor secretary in his Cabinet. There had never before been a woman Cabinet member. This woman, though, would not agree to take the job if FDR did not agree to support her goals.

She faced FDR squarely and ticked off the items on her list: a forty-hour workweek, a minimum wage, worker’s compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized public employment service, and health insurance. Quite a list!

The woman in question was Frances Perkins, and she did become FDR’s Secretary of Labor, serving in that position for Roosevelt’s entire 12 years in office.

The story of her meeting FDR and presenting her conditions for accepting his invitation to join his Cabinet is told in the prologue of Kirstin Downey’s definitive biography of Perkins, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (2009).

Frances Perkins was born on April 10, 1880, and when she stepped down from office in 1945—twenty years before her death in May 1965—she remarked to Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, “I came to work for God, FDR and the millions of forgotten, plain, common working men” (Downey, p. 398).

Born in Boston, Frances graduated from Mount Holyoke College, where she was president of the graduating class of 1902. She led her class to choose “Be ye steadfast” for their class motto, words taken from 1 Corinthians 15:58, which ends, “ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (KJV).

A couple of years after graduating, Frances moved to Chicago where she had considerable contact with Jane Addams and Hull House—and also considerable contact with poor and needy people. According to Downey, when friends once questioned her as to why it was important for people to help the poor, “Frances responded that it was what Jesus would want them to do” (p. 18).

In 1909 Frances moved to New York City, and on the afternoon of March 25, 1911, she was having tea with friends near Washington Square Park in Manhattan when they heard fire sirens. She was one of many who rushed to gaze in horror at the fire that had broken out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

The second chapter of David Brooks’s book The Road to Character (2015) begins by relating Frances’s experience on that fateful afternoon. Brooks remarks, “After the fire, what had been a career turned into a vocation. Moral indignation set her on a different course. . . . She became impatient with the way genteel progressives went about serving the poor.”

Perkins’s way to serve the poor turned out to be as Secretary of Labor. By being the woman behind the New Deal and the “conscience” of FDR, her contributions to helping the poor were numerous and praiseworthy.

She instigated Social Security, which many of us benefit from now. She also established the nation’s first minimum wage law and the first overtime law, from which many of us have also benefited. And those are just some of her many meritorious accomplishments.

At her funeral, the minister read the Bible verse Perkins recommended to her college graduating class 63 years earlier. Indeed, she had been admirably steadfast in working for God and for FDR—and she did that by laboring tirelessly for “the millions of forgotten, plain, common working men” and women of the country.

The Need for More Intrafaith Dialogue

Moderate and liberal Christians have increasingly emphasized the importance of interfaith dialogue. Locally, the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council was formed in 1989 by Vern Barnet (who, I am happy to say, is a Thinking Friend and regular reader of this blog).

“To develop deeper understanding within the community of each other’s faiths and traditions, and to foster appropriate bilateral and multilateral interfaith dialogue and interaction” is the first goal the GKCIC presents on their website.

Here is the second of their five goals: “To model spiritual and religious values, especially mutual respect and cooperation, in a society often intolerant of cultural and religious diversity.”

These are good goals, ones that would be shared by most groups and individuals who work for interfaith dialogue anywhere.

EthicsDaily.com is a division of the Baptist Center for Ethics, an organization founded in 1991 by Robert Parham. BCE launched EthicsDaily.com in 2002 and posts news, columns, editorials and other content each weekday.

(I am also happy to say that from time to time EthicsDaily.com posts my slightly revised blog articles, the last one being on March 29 as you can see here.)

On January 5, BCE Executive Director Parham posted “Prioritize Interfaith Engagement in 2016—The Baptist Way” on EthicsDaily.com. It is a good article, and anyone interested in interfaith dialogue would find it helpful, whether Baptist or not.

I am completely in favor of interfaith dialogue, especially in ways articulated by Parham in the article just cited. But I have come to think that there also needs to be m ore emphasis upon and concerted attempts at having intrafaith dialogue.

Conservative/fundamentalist Christians are not inclined toward having much dialogue of either type, for reasons I won’t go into here. Neither do moderate/liberal Christians seem to have much interest in having dialogue with the former. Some on both camps, sadly, often make denigrating and condescending remarks about those in the other camp.

Some liberal Christians, it seems, would much rather have dialogue with Buddhists and Muslims than with conservative/fundamentalist Christians. That is partly because dialogue with the former is mostly with well-educated, mild-mannered, tolerant people.

On the other hand, there is a stereotype that most conservatives/fundamentalists are ignorant, boisterous, and intolerant. Make no mistake about it: some of them are just that. But there are people exactly like that in other religions also.

All Buddhists and Muslims are not like the fine people in those religious camps who participate in the interfaith councils. But neither are all conservative Christians and evangelicals as ignorant and as intolerant as some we see in the public media.

There are, unquestionably, some conservative/evangelical Christians who are well-educated and good thinkers. Why shouldn’t moderate/liberal Christians be as willing to engage with them in dialogue as they are with those in non-Christian religions?

There are, of course, some examples of good intrafaith dialogue. I think, for example, of Evangelical Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (1989) by David L. Edwards and John Stott as well as Clark Pinnock’s Crossfire: An Evangelical-Liberal Dialogue (1991).

Pinnock begins his book by writing, “The major division in modern theology is not between Catholics and Protestants anymore but between liberals and evangelicals.” And he goes on to say that “the polarization is often so extreme that it is rare for evangelicals and liberals to talk with each other, much less try to understand one another in a sympathetic way.”

That was 25 years ago, and the situation is probably worse now. So, isn’t there a crying need for more intrafaith dialogue? I, for one, certainly think so.

Is Proclaiming Jesus’ Resurrection Political Incorrect?

A few weeks ago I posted a blog article about political correctness. For the most part I favor the effort to be politically correct, for in its best form political correctness shows empathic understanding of those who are often discriminated against or belittled.

There was some questioning of a more recent article, though, along this very line. There was no direct reference to my not being P.C., but it was implied that what I wrote about the origins of Christianity and of Islam was problematic.

From the beginning I knew that there would likely be some pushback, for what I wrote could be used as an excuse to criticize, discriminate against, or mistreat Muslims today. I tried to counter that possibility by writing what I did in the final paragraph.

Christians around the world have just celebrated Easter (except for those in the Orthodox tradition who will not celebrate Easter until May 1). If there was, in fact, something historical about the resurrection of Jesus, Easter is an event that decisively differentiates Christianity from other religions.

Many have understood Jesus’ resurrection much too literally, seeing it is some sort of miraculous resuscitation of his physical body. That is not the kind of resurrection I am writing about.

On the other hand, many liberal Christian interpretations emphasize that Jesus’ resurrection was mainly metaphorical or “psychological” rather than historical. That is, it is explained as the “resurrection” of the spirit of Jesus in the hearts and minds of his early followers.

John Shelby Spong, for example, contends that the Jesus’ resurrection took place in Galilee, where the disciples had fled after Jesus’ crucifixion, rather than in Jerusalem, where Jesus had been buried in Joseph’s tomb.

Liberals need some way to explain the resurrection so Christianity can be considered just one religion among many that are equally valid and valuable.

That is not the kind of resurrection I am writing about either.

Recently, I have written a review of a book about the life and thought of Lesslie Newbigin. In that process I looked again at some of his notable writings, especially The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (1989). Newbigin (1909-98), an Englishman, was one of the premier missionaries and missiologists of the 20^th century. (Several years ago I wrote a blog article in praise of Newbigin.)

Newbigin repeatedly used the words “public truth” in referring to the Christian message, and one of his smaller books is titled Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (1991). The idea of public truth, of course, stands in stark contrast to the relativistic idea of truth in post-modernism and often in liberal Christianity as well.

He wrestles with the problem of truth not just from the standpoint of religious faith but also epistemologically, making repeated references to the significance of Michael Polanyi’s emphasis on “personal knowledge.”

In Truth to Tell, Newbigin avers, “To believe that the crucified Jesus rose from the dead, left an empty tomb, and regrouped his scatted disciples for their world mission can only be the result of a very radical change of mind indeed.”

He goes on to assert that “the simple truth is that the resurrection cannot be accommodated in any way of understanding the world except one of which it is the starting point” (p. 10-11).

Belief in the Resurrection should never lead to arrogance, condescension, or triumphalism. That belief should, however, lead faithful Christians to have confidence in the uniqueness of Jesus and to proclaim, boldly and lovingly, the significance of that pivotal event—even though some might consider it politically incorrect.

The Fire that Changed America

For several weeks I had planned to write this article about the terrible “Triangle fire” that occurred 105 years today. Then earlier this month I had the privilege of hearing a talk by David Von Drehle, an editor-at-large for Time magazine. (Some of you may have seen his cover story about Donald Trump in the March 14 issue of Time.)

Von Drehle (b. 1961), I learned then, is also the author of Triangle: The Fire that Changed America (2003). It is an engrossing book about the Triangle Waist Company fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, a fire that tragically took the lives of 146 people.

Last week June and I also watched “Triangle Fire,” a DVD that was originally a PBS program produced in 2011 as part of the centennial remembrance of what they call “the tragedy that forever changed labor and industry.”

Von Drehle’s first chapter tells about the beginning and growth of the waist factories in Manhattan during the first decade of the 20^th century. That was when waists and skirts first became popular wearing apparel for women in this country. (At that time, women’s blouses were known as “shirtwaists,” or simply as “waists.”)

Hundreds of factories sprang up in New York City to produce the popular new garment. The great majority of the workers in those factories were women who were new immigrants, mostly Italians and East European Jews. The working conditions, as well as the living conditions, for most of those factory workers were terrible.

Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were the owners of the Triangle Waist Company. According to Von Drehle, “They were rich men, and when they glanced into the faces of their workers they saw, with rare exceptions, anonymous cogs in a profit machine” (p. 36). 

Those were still the days of “robber barons,” men who became wealthy through the exploitation of the people who out of financial necessity had to work for them with very low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions.

The fire right at closing time on that March afternoon in Manhattan drew huge crowds, as did the funeral march for the Triangle dead four days later. From 350,000 to 400,000 people participated in what one newspaper called one of the “most impressive spectacles of sorrow New York has ever known.”

As Von Drehle emphasizes, though, “the plight of the shirtwaist workers brought together the forces of change” (p. 193). Eight new workplace safety laws were created in 1912, including the law that women and boys could not work more than 54 hours a week. The next year, 25 more new laws were passed to protect factory workers.

The Triangle fire also resulted in political changes in New York and eventually in the nation. For many years up until 1911, New York was controlled by the Democratic Party’s corrupt political machine known as Tammany Hall.

However, it was Tammany Hall that pushed through the new labor laws of 1913, and it was evident in that year’s elections that it had become “a true friend of the working class” (Von Drehle, p. 217).

Later, “Tammany’s Al Smith, bearing the legacy of the Triangle fire, grew into the dominant political figure in New York from 1918 to 1928” (p. 259). Smith, then, became the Democrat’s candidate for President in 1928.

Von Drehle concludes, “In the generation after the Triangle fire, urban Democrats became America’s working-class, progressive party” (p. 260). And that is still true today.

The Case against "Demon Rum"

Many of the great 19th-century women leaders in the U.S. were against what they considered three great evils: slavery, discrimination against women (including no voting rights), and alcohol. The first two evils have largely been eradicated. But not the third.

Jane Addams, the subject of my 9/5/15 blog article, was active in the temperance movement, as was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the main subject of my 11/10/15 article, and her close friend Susan B. Anthony.

One of the main 19^th century opponents of alcohol was Frances Willard. She is best known as the first national president of the Women’s Christian Temperance League, serving in that position from 1879 until her death in 1898.

In addition, Willard was a strong advocate of women’s suffrage, and her vision included federal aid to education, free school lunches, unions for workers, the eight-hour workday, work relief for the poor, municipal sanitation and boards of health, national transportation, strong anti-rape laws, protections against child abuse, etc.

Willard was a strong suffragette partly because she thought it would take women’s votes to pass laws against liquor. Consequently, fear that alcohol would become illegal was one of the reasons for much male opposition to giving women the right to vote.

In spite of women not being able to vote nationally, though, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the production, transport, and sale of alcohol was ratified in January 1919 and went into effect a year later.  

Interestingly, the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote was ratified 19 months later.

Last Dec. 22, 2015, the Washington Post published an article titled “Americans are drinking themselves to death at record rates.” According to that article, in 2014 “more than 30,700 Americans died from alcohol-induced causes,” a 35-year high.

Moreover, that number “excludes deaths from drunk driving, other accidents, and homicides committed under the influence of alcohol. If those numbers were included the annual toll of deaths directly or indirectly caused by alcohol would be closer to 90,000.”

From that and many other sources, it seems indisputable that the consumption of alcohol has a direct causal relationship to health problems, fatal and disabling accidents, homicides, domestic violence, rapes, and other negative issues, such as financial problems for those with limited means.

Of course, some will quickly say, “But that is only when alcohol is drunk excessively or irresponsibility.” While that is probably true, who ever starts drinking with the intention of doing so excessively (except maybe temporarily) or irresponsibly?

Proponents of stricter gun control repeatedly point out that guns cause some 33,000 deaths each year in this country. But if the figure of 90,000 deaths caused by alcohol is correct, guns are not nearly as much of a problem as alcohol is. Moreover, alcohol is a worldwide program.

Even though I am a strong advocate of greater gun control, perhaps the NRA and its friends are correct: it is not guns that kill people, it is people who kill people. Is that really any different from saying that alcohol does not cause problems, it is the people who use alcohol excessively or irresponsibly who cause problems?

What is the solution to the alcohol problem? Probably not more laws. But maybe a long-term educational program such as there has been against tobacco. The detrimental effects of tobacco has been widely disseminated, including in public schools. As a result, smoking in this country has decreased drastically.

No doubt the nineteenth-century women who were opposed to the three big problems of slavery, discrimination against women, and “demon rum” would be pleased if society now took the latter problem much more seriously.

Radical Christianity vs. Radical Islam

Years ago I taught a Christian Studies course at Seinan Gakuin University titled “Radical Christianity.” The Japanese word for “radical,” just like the English one, had to be defined, for it was a term easily misunderstood.

As part of my explanation I told the students how the English word, which is often transliterated into Japan, comes from the Latin word radix, which means root. So my emphasis was that radical Christianity was the sort of belief and practice that went back to its roots, to Jesus and his teaching and activities.

(By the way, do you know about Radix, the “radical” Christianity magazine? I subscribed to it for several years, beginning soon after its initial appearance in 1976.)

In explaining what radical Christianity looks like in Christian history, I talked about people such as Francis of Assisi, Kagawa Toyohiko, Martin Luther King Jr., and Clarence Jordan (among others).

The only examples I used were Christians who believed in and practiced non-violence and who were devoted to social justice. And I still believe those are characteristics of what radical Christianity should, and does, embrace.

In recent years the term “radical Islam” has been widely used—and in such cases radical has a completely different meaning—or does it? In general use, radical means “associated with political views, practices, and policies of extreme change” (Merriam-Webster). Used this way, it most often includes use of violence to bring about that change.

Christianity changed from its radical beginnings to become more and more aligned with violence (war). In contrast, until the recent rise of the Taliban, ISIS, and other such radical groups, Islam became more and more peaceful through the centuries.

“Muhammad and the Caliphate” is the first chapter of the massive tome titled The Oxford History of Islam (1999). It is explained there that beginning in 627 Muhammed “launched raids against Meccan caravans, seizing valuable booty and hostages.”

Then by a “series of raids and battles” Muhammad was able to subdue some of his opponents and by “outright force” was able to subdue other groups.

Soon after Muhammed’s death in 632, Abu Bakr, his successor, sanctioned the “Apostasy wars” and then by “shows of force” brought the entire Arabian peninsula under his control by 634 (pp. 10-11).

The British historian Hugh Kennedy is the author of The Great Arab Conquests (2007). In his first chapter Kennedy explains how Muhammad’s “military campaigns” were “the beginning of the Muslim conquests. His example showed that armed force was going to be an acceptable and important element first in the defence of the new religion and then in its expansion.”

Kennedy also writes, “The Prophet’s example meant that there was no parallel to the tendency to pacificism [sic] so marked in early Christianity” (p. 48).

In spite of the changes that later took place, both in Christianity and Islam, it seems indisputable that the nature of the public activities of Jesus and Mohammed from the beginning to the end of their lives differed greatly. There was also great difference in the activities of the followers of Jesus and Mohammed in the decades after their deaths.

Restoring radical Christianity is a challenging and worthy goal for all Christians, and one I continue to promote. How badly most contemporary Christians need to go back to following the radical teachings and activities of Jesus!

On the other hand, staunchly opposing radical Islam, such as embodied by ISIS, as well as affirming and supporting the peaceful Islam that has developed through the centuries and widely practiced here in the U.S. now is also badly needed.

The Amazing Nick Vujicic

There have been, and are, many amazing people in the world. Recently, I wrote (here) about the amazing Grimké sisters. They were amazing because in spite of growing up as privileged white girls in Charleston, S.C., they became leaders in the movement to abolish slavery in the U.S.

In completely different ways, Nick Vujicic (pronounced voy-a-chich) is also a most amazing person. He was born on December 4, 1982, in Australia of parents who had, before they met, each fled their native country of Serbia.

What a shock it was to them when Nick, their first child, was born with phocomelia! That little-known term describes the condition of babies who are born with malformed or missing limbs. (The term literally means “seal limbs.”)

Nick was born with no limbs at all, just one small foot with two toes at the bottom of his torso. Thus, he was destined to live a life without arms or legs as even prosthetics did not seem to work for him. Appropriately, his official website address is LifeWithoutLimbs.org.

His best known book, though, is titled Life Without Limits (2010). It is the inspiring, first-person story of this truly amazing man. In spite of their initial shock, Nick’s parents were pretty amazing, too, in the way they reared their son in spite of the tremendous challenges.

Nick’s book is a combination of autobiography, motivational messages, and Christian testimony all mixed together.

On the first page of the Introduction, Nick writes, “I was born without any limbs, but I am not constrained by my circumstances. I travel the world encouraging millions of people to overcome adversity with faith, hope, love, and courage so that they may pursue their dreams.”

It is certainly amazing how a person born with what seems to be such serious physical handicaps and disabilities has become an international speaker who seeks to motivate people to overcome their own physical or psychological handicaps that keep them from achievement and happiness.

Nick learned how to overcome the tremendous physical challenges he was born with, so in most ways he lives much the same as “normal” people—although he does need the help of a caregiver for many things, especially when he travels.

And Nick has literally travelled to countries around the world and has, as he says in the Introduction, spoken to millions of people in person and over television. June and I have seen him on “Hour of Power,” the Schullers’ TV program.

As strange as it might seem, Nick has even starred in a short movie. You can access “Butterfly Circus,” the movie he was in, here and watch the whole 20 minutes.

Kanae Miyahara was born in central Mexico, the daughter of a Japanese agricultural engineer and a Mexican mother. When she was a teenager, she moved to Texas to live with relatives, including her older sister.

Later, Kanae went to hear Nick speak in Dallas met him on that occasion. A romantic relationship developed, and they were married in February 2012. One year and one day later their first son, Kiyoshi, was born. Their second son was born in August of last year.

In 2014, Nick and Kanae co-authored a new book titled Love Without Limits: A Remarkable Story of True Love Conquering All. And theirs is truly a remarkable story.

Without a doubt, Nick and Kanae are amazing people. If you, or someone you know, are discouraged and feeling defeated, or even if you are not, I recommend the reading of Nick’s book. Those who do so will surely be amazed and inspired.