Clarina Nichols, Frontier Feminist

Like many of you, for many years I have known the names of and something about leading U.S. feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815~1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820~ 1906). However, I knew nothing about Clarina Nichols, another outstanding feminist, until rather recently.

But Clarina is also a woman definitely worth knowing about.

Fairly recently, June and I have become friends with Diane Eickhoff and her husband Aaron Barnhart. After becoming acquainted with Diane, I found out that she had written a book titled Revolutionary Heart: The Life of Clarina Nichols and the Pioneering Crusade for Women’s Rights (2006).

I decided to read Diane’s book and discovered that not only was it very well written, but Ms. Nichols was also a remarkable woman. I was happy to learn about her life and achievements.

Clarina Irene Howard was born in Vermont on January 25, 1810. At the age of 20, she married Justin Carpenter, who turned out to be a weak man, unable to provide for his wife and their three children. They separated in 1839, and her divorce in 1843 was granted on the basis of “cruelty, unkindness, and intolerable severity.”

Clarina then married George Nichols, a newspaper editor and a widower twenty-eight years her senior. Clarina became an editor alongside, and then in place of, her husband, and from that position became one of this country’s earliest advocates for women’s rights.

In 1854 she pulled up stakes to pioneer in “bleeding Kansas” when that part of the country was enmeshed in the struggle over slavery, another issue that greatly concerned her. 

According to Diane, “As an independent, self-supporting woman, . . . she challenged conservative clergy, championed abused wives, and changed laws affecting women in several states.”

Clarina Nichols died 130 years ago this past Sunday, on January 11, 1885. Interestingly, Alice Paul was born on that very same day. Alice grew up to be an indefatigable advocate for women’s suffrage, which Clarina dreamed of and worked for so laboriously but without success.

Finally, because of Alice’s efforts, along with those of many others, in 1920 women in this country finally were given the right to vote, 35 years after Clarina’s death.

Some of you might be interested in reading Diane’s book. And some of you might have already seen, or may want to see, Iron Jawed Angels, the engaging 2004 film about Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and their struggle that led to the passage of the 19^th Amendment.

Ms. Paul is admirably played by talented actress Hilary Swank. (Last June when I was in Maloy, Iowa, visiting Brian Terrell whom I wrote about here, I heard that Hilary Swank’s father, Steve who had grown up in Ringgold County where Maloy is located, had bought the old Catholic church in that village and lives in the former church rectory.)

It was because of women such as Clarina and Alice that all U.S. women finally acquired voting rights. But there is still a long way to go for there to be gender equality in this nation. For example, in the 114^th U.S. Congress that convened for the first time this month, there are 84 women in the House of Representatives and 20 women serving in the Senate.

But even though women make up half of the population, women still comprise only about 20% of those serving in Congress. That percentage is growing, though—and from what I hear there is a strong possibility that the next POTUS will be a woman.

The Beloved Community

First coined in the early days of the 20^th century by the philosopher/theologian Josiah Royce, “The Beloved Community” is a term that was popularized and invested with a deeper meaning by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The website of the King Center gives a two-page explanation of “the beloved community” as envisioned by Dr. King. Foremost in his thinking for creating such a community were the characteristics of brotherhood and sisterhood, nonviolence, and justice.

To a significant degree, those of us who are a part of Rainbow Mennonite Church in Kansas City, Kansas, experience the joys of being in a beloved community. As an Anabaptist church, RMC regularly emphasizes the characteristics just mentioned.

Although King was a Baptist pastor, his emphasis on nonviolence is especially much more in harmony with the Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups than with most of the Baptist churches in the U.S. And one of King’s closest colleagues was the Mennonite scholar Vincent Harding, who passed away last May at the age of 82.

The goal of RMC is to accept all people “regardless of race, ethnic identity, gender, sexual orientation, age, economic or other life circumstances” (words from RMC’s homepage). The picture below, which shows those who served Communion at RMC this past Sunday, is one small expression of what that looks like.

As a rule, the Communion service is led by the pastor assisted by the worship leader for the day, who last Sunday was Carmen, and the deacon in charge of preparations, who happened to be me. In the picture Pastor Ruth Harder is handing the cup to Amy, who was helping serve Communion for the first time.

There are six deacons at RMC, always three women and three men, and they rotate being in charge of Communion preparation. Being in charge includes enlisting three other servers. In addition to Amy, I had asked Fred, an older African-American man June and I sit next to almost every Sunday, and Emma, a high school student who was baptized last year, to help serve. Because of the snow that morning, Fred didn’t make it, so Dave substituted for him.

At RMC there is no “qualification” for being a Communion server other than being a part of the “beloved community.” In the Baptist churches I had been part of in the States, the Lord’s Supper was always, as far as I can remember, served by the deacons—who except for the last Baptist church I was a member of were always white men.

It was in Japan that I first experienced women serving as deacons and serving Communion. And then for years and years at the Fukuoka International Church that June and I help start and which I served as (part-time) pastor for 24 years, there were no deacons. So the servers for the Lord’s Supper were more like those at RMC—except there were usually only two beside the presiding pastor.

By “the beloved community,” King meant more than local church congregations. But local congregations are a good place to start. If our churches don’t find ways to transcend race, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, age, and economic differences, how can we possibly expect to see the emergence of the beloved community in the larger society?

Note

This coming Wednesday, January 14, is the regular monthly meeting of Vital Conversations at the Mid-Continent Public Library in Gladstone (Mo.). The discussion topic will be “The Beloved Community” and several local African-American guests are expected to be present for the meeting, which begins at 1 p.m. Visitors are cordially welcome.

Prayers for 2015

In this first blog article of 2015, I am reflecting back on the year that has just ended and am sharing some of my prayers for the year that lies ahead.

First, I pray for health and happiness for all of you, my dear readers. I much appreciate each of you who have read most, or even some, of my articles this year.

Although I would like to have heard from more of you, comments have been posted by and emails received from readers all across the U.S. and Canada as well as from overseas. I sincerely appreciate all the comments received, even those that did not agree with what I wrote.

No one knows who, but some of us probably won’t be here at the end of 2015. Some to whom I regularly sent blog links by email and others to whom I sent printed articles occasionally are no longer living.

So while I pray for our health and happiness, none of us know how many days we have left. Since they may not be as many as we would like to think, I pray that we will make the most of those we have.

Now looking out across our country and world and again reflecting on the events of this past year, I pray that there will be a lessening of racial tensions and of bad relations between police officers and ordinary citizens, especially people of color.

As you know, since the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the choking death of Eric Garner in New York—and especially since the police officers involved in those death were not indicted—there have been widespread protests and some violence across the country. And then on Dec. 20, two police officers were senselessly murdered by an apparently demented man.

Lord God, I pray that in this new year everyone will come to realize, indeed, that “black lives matter” and that the lives of police officers matter, too.

One of the most tragic events of this year has been the warring activities of ISIL, or ISIS, which refers to itself as the Islamic State (IS). Their atrocious activities led to the U.S. response of bombing IS targets in Iraq and Syria.

Lord, I pray that in 2015 fighting in the Near East may begin to wind down, that the hostilities of IS will be contained, and that all people of good will in that troubled part of the world can begin working together for peace.

The Ebola outbreak in western Africa and fears of that terrible disease spreading in this country was one of the scariest news stories of the year, and my prayer is one of gratitude that it did not become a problem of note in the U.S. and one of intercession for those still suffering from Ebola in Liberia and the surrounding countries where the effects of that crisis linger.

One of the biggest political events in the U.S. last year was the capture of the Senate by Republicans, who did well in the November elections. The 114^th Congress will convene tomorrow, January 6, and it remains to be seen how it will fare. My prayer is that there can be increased working “across the aisle” and meaningful legislation can be passed for the well-being of people across the country.

Gracious God, thank you for the new year and the hope of good things coming to pass in it. May your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Amen.

Time and Eternity

We never give up. Our bodies are gradually dying, but we ourselves are being made stronger each day. These little troubles are getting us ready for an eternal glory that will make all our troubles seem like nothing. Things that are seen don’t last forever, but things that are not seen are eternal. That’s why we keep our minds on the things that cannot be seen. (2 Corinthians 4:16-19, Contemporary English Version)

On this last day of the year and on the cusp of a new year, we are drawn into thinking about the passage of time. And some of us have seen a considerable passage of time: for example, today is the 27,898^th day since I was born.

Perhaps all of us who have passed the 27,000^th day mark realize that our physical bodies “are gradually dying.” But I hope we are also experiencing “ourselves” as “being made stronger each day.” Unfortunately, I am afraid that not all of us are experiencing that.

It seems that many people now do not recognize the actuality of “an eternal glory” and do not keep their minds “on the things that cannot be seen.”

Across the country and around the world, I fear there has been a considerable loss of a sense of eternity even among those who are Christian believers. Except for those who are firmly entrenched in the world of conservative evangelicalism, the reality of eternity seems to be becoming dimmer and dimmer.

In the Christianity of the past there was often too much emphasis on Heaven and not enough emphasis on this world and its present ills. There was too much stress on “the sweet by and by” and not enough on “the dirty here and now.”

With all the emphasis on eternity, the hope of Heaven was sometimes used to justify deplorable conditions on earth in the present. For example, slaves were told to be patient and to endure their current suffering steadfastly, for soon they would be walking on the streets of gold.

In many Christian circles, the idea of Hell as everlasting punishment has been discarded—and most of us would say “Good riddance.” (I have long understood Hell as annihilation.)

It also seems that more and more the idea of Heaven as everlasting bliss to be enjoyed in the future by individual human beings is also fading.

Part of the reason for this change may be a common misunderstanding of the meaning of “eternal,” long considered to be unending time. Properly understood, however, eternity refers to a state of timelessness, not to time which goes on endlessly.

Eternity is the realm of God, Creator of Heaven and earth—and of time. To God, all space is Here and all time is Now. God’s “existence” is in what some theologians refer to as the “eternal now.”

This juxtaposition of the Creator and the created, or time and eternity, causes many to focus only on the created world and on matters that exist in time while questioning and even rejecting ideas about God and eternity. This problem is due to what Kierkegaard referred to as the “infinite qualitative distinction” between God and humans.

So today and tomorrow as we think about time passing from 2014 to 2015, this is a good time to reflect also on the meaning and significance of eternity and to focus our minds on the things that cannot be seen—as well as to give attention to things, and people, that can be seen and need our care and kindness.

We humans were wonderfully created to live simultaneously in both time and eternity.

The Amazing Christmas Truce of 1914

As has been noted from time to time this year, the Great War, later to be called World War I, began one hundred years ago this past summer. By August 1914, Britain and France were fully engaged in war against Germany.

In September trench warfare began as troops from both sides constructed opposing fortifications and dugouts protected by barbed wire, machine-gun nests, snipers, and mortars, with an in-between area called No Man’s Land. The 450-mile “Western front” stretched from the English Channel coast southward through Belgium and Eastern France to Switzerland.

Living in and fighting from the trenches was a terrible experience, one of considerable squalor with so many men living in a very constrained space. Here is how one website describes trench life:

Scraps of discarded food, empty tins and other waste, the nearby presence of the latrine, the general dirt of living half underground and being unable to wash or change for days or weeks at a time created conditions of severe health risk (and that is not counting the military risks). Vermin including rats and lice were very numerous; disease was spread both by them, and by the maggots and flies that thrived on the nearby remains of decomposing human and animal corpses.

But at Christmastime in many places along the Western front, there was an unofficial truce as some of the men on both sides decided to celebrate the joy of Christmas rather than fight.

The Wall Street Journal began its Dec. 19 article “The Spirit of the 1914 Christmas Truce” with these words written by Frank Richards, a British soldier:

On Christmas morning we stuck up a board with ‘A Merry Christmas’ on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. . . . Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans done the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

From The Illustrated London News of January 9, 1915: "British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches"

The amazing story of the events of Dec. 25, 1914, is engagingly told by Stanley Weintraub in his 2001 book, “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.” Weintraub ended his book with the closing words of “A Carol from Flanders” by Frederick Niven, whom Weintraub calls a “very minor Scottish poet of Great War vintage.”

Niven wrote, “O ye who read this truthful rime / From Flanders, kneel and say: / God speed the time when every day / Shall be as Christmas Day.”

Even if they were not as spectacular as sometimes dramatized, still those events 100 years ago are worth considering—and they are being widely remembered this week at various commemorative activities being held around the world. That amazing Christmas truce of 1914 was a ray of hope at a very dark time in the history of the world.

That ray of hope still shines, and is still much needed now, 100 years later. There is so much that is dark is the world today: racial tension across the U.S., fierce fighting in Iraq and across the Middle East, hunger and poverty stunting lives in city slums around the world, and so forth.

But Christmas is the time of the year for renewed hope for the future and renewed determination to work to make every day to be like Christmas Day. I pray that the good news of Christ, the Prince of Peace, will lodge in all our hearts.

Appropriate and Inappropriate Missionary Activity

Should missionaries ever seek to change social practices and work to make laws that would change what is thought unacceptable in the countries to which they go? Most Christians now would probably say No, although perhaps they would allow for some exceptions, such as in cases such as sati (suttee) in India and foot binding in China.

Sati, the practice or burning widows on the pyres of their dead husbands, was strongly opposed by English Baptist missionary William Carey for 25 years, and in 1829 it was finally banned in India.

Partly as the result of considerable opposition by Christian missionaries in China, the cruel practice of mutilating the feet of young girls, usually called “foot binding,” was outlawed there in 1912.

In both of these cases, missionaries were opposed to customs that were unlike Western practices because of the perceived harm done to people they wanted to liberate from inhumane practices.

But in very recent years there is the odd phenomenon of some missionaries promoting legislation that most Western countries now reject. The main case in point is the anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda. It was exactly a year ago, on Dec. 20, 2013, that the Ugandan legislature passed a harsh law authorizing severe punishment for homosexual activity in that African country.

As has been widely publicized, and severely criticized, by many Westerners, some of the impetus behind that Ugandan anti-gay legislation was the outspoken support of some Christian missionaries and U.S. pastors.

Earlier this year I watched “God Loves Uganda,” the 2013 documentary about those working for and against anti-homosexuality legislation in that country.

The movie starts with scenes from Kansas City and clips of Lou Engle, one of the co-founders of IHOP in 1999. Throughout the film there are many references to IHOP missionaries working for the anti-gay legislation in Uganda.

IHOP (the International House of Prayer) is considered by many to be a Christian cult. But one of the best students I had one semester three or four years ago was a member of IHOP, and she had nothing but praise for her “church.”

And in stark contrast to what is depicted in the documentary, IHOP has disavowed any connection with the anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda. (Here is the link to an interview with Mike Bickle, the main leader of IHOP from its beginning, about that matter.)

In spite of IHOP’s disclaimer, however, it is hard to think that the makers of “God Loves Uganda” fabricated the footage of IHOP-linked missionaries being strong advocates of the anti-gay legislation.

On the other hand, the documentary also shows some Ugandan Christian leaders (especially Christopher Senyonjo, a retired bishop in the Church of Uganda and Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest) staunchly opposing the anti-homosexuality bill. 

At the end of the film it was noted that the “Anti-Homosexuality Act” was signed by the Ugandan president on Feb. 25, 2014. In August, however, that law was declared unconstitutional on a technicality. But an equally harsh, or even harsher, law is still very much in the works, it seems.

There are some efforts for cultural change and legislation that are legitimate for missionaries to be engaged in. That includes, for example, anti-FGM (female genital mutilation) activities at the present.

People who are mistreated, demeaned, or treated unjustly need to be liberated from customs and practices that seem clearly to be in opposition to the teaching and example of Jesus. Thus, those born with homosexual orientation are appropriately included with people needing liberation and they should never be made the target of unjust laws.

Remembering Glenn Miller

Most of you know well who Glenn Miller was. You likely listened to and enjoyed his music years ago—and maybe even recently. As I write this, I am listening to a 2005 CD titled “The Essential Glenn Miller.” It got me “in the mood” to write about the talented musician, arranger, composer, and bandleader. 

I am writing about Miller at this particular time because it was on December 15, 1944, that his airplane went missing over the English Channel. It is thus assumed that he died 70 years ago today.

Most of you may not know that Glenn got his first trombone and had the beginning of his musical career in the little town of Grant City, Missouri—which just happens to be my hometown. Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa, on March 1, 1904, but in 1915 his family moved to Grant City where they resided until 1918.

According to the memorial erected on the courthouse lawn by the Worth County Historical Society in 1999, it was in the county seat town of Grant City that Glenn “acquired his first trombone and taught to play by John Mosbarger, the town band director. Young Miller worked as a shoe shine boy in Mosbarger’s cleaning parlor.”

I couldn’t find it documented anywhere, but I remember hearing how some of the people in the Grant City town band didn’t particularly like for young Glenn, who apparently looked sort of tacky, to march with them. In response to their grumbling, Mr. Mosbarger (1881-1956) told them than if they didn’t want Glenn to march with them, then he could walk with him at the front of the band.

On the front page of the June 11 issue of The Times-Tribune, my hometown weekly newspaper, there was an article titled “70 years After His Death, Glenn Miller’s Legacy Lives On.” That weekend was the 39th annual Glenn Miller Festival in Clarinda.

I wish I could have attended those festivities, for in addition to the current Glenn Miller Orchestra being there, the Tamana Girls High School Band from Japan also performed. (Tamana is a town about 60 miles from where I lived in Japan for so many years.)

The 1954 movie “The Glenn Miller Story” premiered in Clarinda. During my high school years in Grant City, my only girlfriend was Chloris King. Her mother, Verga (1896-1974), was John Mosbarger’s sister, and I remember Chloris telling about her parents going to Clarinda with Uncle John and his wife Effie for the premier of that film. Jimmy Stewart, who played Miller in the movie, was there for that gala opening.

People from Worth County were disappointed that the movie started after the Miller family had moved away from Grant City, so the town is not mentioned at all. But Grant City is referred to in various online websites about Glenn Miller, including Wikipedia.

The town is also mentioned in Scott Stanton’s 2003 book “The Trombone Tourist,” and John Mosbarger is quoted: “Grant City, Missouri, in 1917 wasn’t a very big place, and when a strong-lunged youngster cut loose on a trombone, you heard him all over town” (p. 171).

In 1942 Miller, at the age of 38, volunteered for the U.S. military and formed the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band. On Dec. 15, 1944, Glenn boarded an airplane in England and set off for France, where he was going to perform in a Christmas program. He was never heard from again; his plane apparently crashed in the English Channel. What a tragedy!