The First Day of Winter

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Leroy Seat

No, I am not confused about the date, as maybe you wondered when you saw the title of this posting. I know it is still more than four months until the first day of winter according to the 2013 calendar. But I am writing about the seasons of life.

The Japanese make much of the four seasons. Often in Japan you see four paintings of the same scene in nature, but each in a different season. Sometimes, though, a person’s lifetime is said to have four seasons.

Traditionally, there seems to have been the idea that each season is 20 years long. There are special birthday remembrances for those who turn sixty, which would be the first day of winter if each season is twenty years.

Years ago I had a Japanese acquaintance who thought that each season should be 30 years long, so he talked about living to be 120. (I have lost touch with him, and I’m afraid he has already passed away, long before reaching 120.)

Still, maybe he was onto something. The cover of the May 2013 issue of “National Geographic” shows a young child, above whose picture are the words: “This Baby Will Live to be 120.” And a footnote says, “It’s not just hype. New science could lead to very long lives.”

But for me and maybe for all of you reading this, living until 120 is quite unlikely, and perhaps not even desirable. Realistically, four seasons of 25 years is perhaps all we can expect—and even at that most of us will likely not make it to the end of winter.

I am writing this because today, August 15, is my 75th birthday, and I am thinking of this as being the first day of winter for me. Actually, I started thinking about this more than a year ago. And I thought I would probably make several lifestyle changes at the beginning of winter.

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For example, I thought I would not sign up to teach any more university classes. And I thought I would quit jogging and just take long walks for exercise.

But during the past several months I changed my mind. I have agreed to start teaching my one class again at Rockhurst University next week. I am also going to keep on jogging two-miles a time, five days a week – at least for now.

Of course, health is a big factor in what one does. Illness greatly hampers a person’s activities regardless of age. But I have decided that as long as one is healthy there is no use ceasing to do what one enjoys doing, or what is good for you, because of an arbitrary date.

So I am going to keep on keeping on, enjoying winter, and enjoying being active, for as long as possible.

What about you? According to a Pew Research study released this month, “69% of American adults would like to live to be 79 to 100 years old.” But only 8% wanted to live past 100. So maybe four 25-year seasons is a good way to think about the “ideal” length of life.

Those of us who are already 75 or older can enjoy the beauty of winter. And for the rest of you who have not yet reached winter, let me assure you that it will be here faster than you think.

Note: This blog posting – and more than 300 others – can also be found at http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com

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Considering Robert Ingersoll, “the Great Agnostic”

Posted on August 10, 2013 by Leroy Seat

 On August 11, 1833, John Ingersoll, a Christian pastor, and his wife Mary became the proud parents of a baby boy, whom they named Robert Green.

In spite of being born into a pious home in a small upstate New York town, Robert G. Ingersoll for many years proudly bore the label “the Great Agnostic.” And by the time of his death in 1899, he had been one of the best known public speakers in America for decades.

I was probably still a teenager when I first heard reference made to Ingersoll at the Baptist church, or maybe at the Baptist college, I attended. However, I don’t remember hearing him called what many conservative Christians dubbed him: Injuresoul.

When he was twenty years old, the Ingersoll family moved to the town of Marion in southern Illinois. The following year both he and his older brother were admitted to the bar.

According to Marion’s historical website, “A county historian writing 22 years later noted that local residents considered the Ingersolls as a ‘very intellectual family; but, being Abolitionists, and the boys being deists, rendered obnoxious to our people in that respect.’”

The young lawyer went on to become a colonel in the Civil War, and then in 1867 he was appointed the first Attorney General of Illinois. He was quite active as a conservative Republican (which then meant something quite different from what it means now). He gave a highly regarded speech in the 1876 Republican National Convention.

That same year he engaged in an extensive conversation with Lew Wallace, a Civil War general who had commanded the battle of Shiloh in which Ingersoll had been captured by the Confederates. As a result of listening to Ingersoll’s negative ideas about Christianity, Wallace decided to write a book about the life of Christ.

Wallace’s work was published in 1880, while he was governor of New Mexico Territory. We know it as both a book and a movie: “Ben Hur.”

For the last 30+ years of his life, Ingersoll was best known as an exciting public speaker – and as an agnostic, rather than a deist. He is said to have spoken in person to more people in the United States than anyone else in the nineteenth century.

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And he probably did more than anyone else in America during that century to spread agnosticism, which has often been called free thinking. But until recently Ingersoll has been largely unknown by most younger people.

The Robert Ingersoll website has posted an eight-minute YouTube video under the title “Meet the Most Remarkable American Most People Never Heard of.”

American journalist, author, and noted atheist Susan Jacoby has sought to resurrect acquaintance with Ingersoll’s life and influence with a book titled “The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought.” I read Jacoby’s work soon after it came out early this year and found it most interesting, although misleading in places.

Still, in May, Washington Post and several other newspapers and websites published Kimberly Winston’s article called “Meet Robert Ingersoll, America’s Most Famous Forgotten Atheist.”

With the growth of atheists/agnostics – and “nones” – in the U.S., there will likely be increasing interest in Ingersoll. And many of us who are “progressive” Christians will find a number of places where we can agree with him, as well as many places where we can’t.

At any rate, the books and other information about Robert Ingersoll, “the great agnostic,” does make for interesting reading. And even though he was born 180 years ago, his ideas, and how to respond to them, are well worth considering now, a time when agnosticism is increasing.

Note: This blog posting – and more than 300 others – can also be found athttp://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com

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“Barefoot Gen”

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Leroy Seat

Tomorrow, August 6, is the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. When the bomb exploded at 8:15 on that hot August morning in 1945, Keiji Nakazawa was on his way to school in Hiroshima

Even though his father, older sister and younger brother all were killed by the atomic blast, six-year-old Kenji “survived miraculously.”

Although Nakazawa was born in Hiroshima in March 1939, seven months after I was born in Missouri, he died in December of last year.

In 1973 Nakazawa published a serialized manga (comic strip) called “Hadashi no Gen” (Barefoot Gen). It was largely autobiographical: Nagazawa was Gen, the spunky boy in the manga, which was published as a graphic novel in 1975.

Barefoot Gen

Even though they may be called comic books, there is certainly nothing funny about the story of “Barefoot Gen.”

The pictures are drawn with comic-strip exaggeration, but from beginning to end Nakazawa’s manga depict the great human tragedy of people, mostly non-combatants, who were killed instantly or soon died from injuries received by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on that fateful August morning.

I read the first volume of “Barefoot Gen” in the 1970s, not long after it first came out in English translation. Last month I read the 1987 English edition of the first volume again and compared it with the new 2004 translation. I also read the second and fifth volumes (published in 2004 and 2007) for the first time.

Even in graphic novel form, it was tough reading because of the horrors depicted.

The first volume mostly tells the story of Gen’s family in the four months before the bombing. Gen’s (Nakazawa’s) father was an outspoken critic of the war frenzy in Japan. Since everyone was expected to be 100% behind the war efforts, he was jailed for a time because of his anti-war talk.

Although it happened earlier in real life, Nakazawa tells about his own father being jailed as a “thought criminal.”

The atomic explosion does not occur until page 250 of the 284-page first volume. So it is the second volume, “The Day After,” which is really hidoi (terrible). But I had known something about that: I had seen “The Hiroshima Panels,” Iri and Toshi Maruki’s large, graphic paintings depicting the horrors of 8/6/45.

However, I hadn’t thought much about the ongoing problem of the war orphans and all the destitute survivors in Hiroshima not only in the months but also in the years following the bombing. That sad story is told in the fifth volume, “The Never-Ending War,” which begins in December 1947.

Toward the middle of that book Nakazawa writes,

The Pacific War ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb. But for people exposed to the bomb’s radiation, the postwar era was just the beginning of a new war with the bomb’s terrifying after effects. In U.S.-occupied Japan, the news media were strictly forbidden from reporting about the effects of the A-bomb. The voices of the suffering – 300,000 atomic bomb survivors – floated into space unheard (p. 156).

How different was Gen’s (Nakazawa’s) life in 1947-48 than mine as a fifth grader in rural northwest Missouri! How little I knew about boys like Gen who were suffering in Japan at that time!

“Barefoot Gen” is well worth reading. I recommend it as a way to grasp something of the unspeakable horror of nuclear bombs and to be impressed with the ongoing need to work for peace and justice in this world of ours.

NoMoreHiroshima

Note: This blog posting – and more than 300 others – can also be found at http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com

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Food for the Hungry

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Leroy Seat

Earlier this month I wrote about the problem of domestic hunger in the U.S. Today I am writing about the problem of hunger in the poorer countries of the world and about combatting that serious and ongoing problem.

For a long time I have been a supporter of the organization known as Food for the Hungry. FH was founded in 1971 and has for many years been an international organization. FH/Japan was formed in 1981, and for many years Eisuke Kanda was the head of it.

In the 1980s, we invited Kanda-sensei to be the Christian Focus Week speaker at Seinan Gakuin University, and I was able not only to get to know him personally but also to hear firsthand about the good work FH/Japan was doing overseas. (Domestic hunger has not been much of a problem in Japan for quite some time.)

Last month I was in Cambodia and spent some time with Hwang Ban-suk, a Korean missionary who is partially supported by, and thus who works with, Korea Food for the Hungry International. I was also impressed by Troeun Nhao, the Cambodian man who works with Hwang and KFHI.

In response to the chronic hunger problem in Cambodia, especially in the rural areas, Hwang literally and directly supplies food for the hungry. He takes bread to malnourished children several times a week.

Mrs. Hwang is a volunteer kindergarten teacher in a small school on the outskirts of Siem Reap, the city where Angkor Wat attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists yearly. I was told there are some 600 hotels and “guest houses” in Siem Reap. Numerous Western and East Asian restaurants line the main roads through the city.

But just a few miles out of town, most people live in poverty. For some families, their yearly income is no more than a party of four spends for one dinner at one of the Japanese or Korean restaurants in town.

On my first full day in Siem Reap, I helped distribute food at the school where Mrs. Hwang teaches, handing out bread to the children who lined up and thankfully received what we gave them.

Distributing bread

For a long time, though, I have thought that even more than helping those who are hungry now, attention needs to be given to dealing with the causes of hunger. Of course the former needs to be done. But only helping with the present problem of hunger is never enough.

Whether domestically or overseas, it is more important to work toward decreasing hunger in the future than to simply give food to hungry people in the present.

That is a problem with most local food distribution groups. To be sure, they do a good and important work in helping needy people now. But usually they do nothing to help solve the underlying causes of the hunger problem.

Thankfully, Food for the Hungry focuses on both. Hwang is involved in development projects as well as in relief efforts. (I was sorry the language barrier kept me from learning more specifically about what he is doing in working for long-term solutions.)

Part of the needed change in Cambodia is in the mind-set of the people. This seems quite clear from reading Joel Brinkley’s book “Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land” (2011).

That is why I am glad to support the work of Food for the Hungry, a Christian organization, and the work of Missionary Hwang, now partly centered in New Hope Church, which I wrote about earlier.

Note: This blog posting – and more than 300 others – can also be found at http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com

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Trayvon and Abdulrahman

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Leroy Seat

The name Trayvon, sadly, has become a household name in the U.S., and elsewhere. But many of you may not know the name Abdulrahman. Both young men, though, were U.S. citizens born in 1995, and both were tragically killed – but in greatly different circumstances.

Trayvon Martin, as you know, was killed at short range in February 2012 by George Zimmerman. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, as you may not know, was killed at very long range by a U.S. drone.

Abdulrahman was born in Denver, Colo. in September 1995, nine months after Trayvon; he was killed in Yemen on Oct. 14, 2011, ten weeks before the Florida teenager was shot and killed.

Abdulrahman

The justification of Trayvon’s slaying is highly questionable, although the jury concluded that under Florida law Zimmerman was not guilty of second degree murder or manslaughter.

The killing of Abdulrahman, though, seems completely unjustified and an unmitigated tragedy. It is hard to compare justification for taking someone’s life, but the killing of Abdulrahman seems much more unjust that the “self-defense” killing of Trayvon.

Abdulrahman’s father, Anwar, was also an American citizen, born in New Mexico in 1971. And he was killed by a “Hellfire missile” fired from a U. S. Predator drone just two weeks before his son.

The father was clearly linked to terrorist activity. There is no evidence at all that the son was.

Details of Abdulrahman’s tragic death are told in Jeremy Scahill’s 2013 book, “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.” The final chapter of that 642-page book is “Paying for the Sins of the Father” and is about Abdulrahman’s annihilation.

On June 28, I attended the opening screening of Scahill’s documentary film with the same name as the book. In it, Scahill interviews Nasser al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman’s grandfather, who is a former Fulbright scholar, university president and Yemeni public servant.

Last week the New York Times ran an article by Grandfather Nasser. It was titled “The Drone That Killed My Grandson.” I encourage you to read that article at this link.

Even though Abdulrahman’s father was involved in terrorist activities, he was an American citizen. Nevertheless, he was never charged with a crime and evidence of his criminal wrongdoing was never presented to a court.

He was just put on a kill list and “taken out” by a drone.

Still, we have been in a “war on terrorism” since 2001, and in a war you target and kill your enemies. So most Americans probably support the killing of Abdulrahman’s father.

And most Americans support continuation of the war on terrorism, according to a Fox News poll. Last month after President Obama said that the war on terrorism “must end,” 77% of the voters polled said the war on terrorism “should continue to be a top priority to the government.

But should that mean targeting and killing a 16-year-old American boy? Surely not!

In responding to questions about his killing, Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary, said that the boy should have had “a more responsible father.”

But maybe we need a more responsible government. And maybe there needs to be more outrage about the killing of Abdulrahman.

Many of us are against profiling and the mistreatment of young African-American men like Trayvon, as we should be.

Why shouldn’t we be even more strongly against the profiling and the killing of a young Yemeni-American man like Abdulrahman?

Note: This blog posting – and more than 300 others – can also be found at http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com

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“The Glad River”

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Leroy Seat

“There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.” These words of Psalm 46:4 (KJV) are cited on page 291 of Will D. Campbell’s “The Glad River” (1982) and are apparently the source of the title.

I recently finished reading Campbell’s novel, deciding to read it shortly after hearing of his death early last month. He would have celebrated his 89th birthday this week, on July 18, had he not passed away on June 3. Will CampbellCampbell was often referred to as a “maverick.” Among other newspapers and websites, headlines in the New York Times on June 4 and on HuffingtonPost.com on June 5 described him that way.

The central character in “The Glad River” is Doops, a young man born in Mississippi in 1920, four years before the author. And while Campbell said his novel was not autobiographical, Doops is also a maverick as was his creator.

Although having a Baptist mother who tries for years to convince Doops to be baptized, he continually refuses to do so until late in the book—and I can’t tell the details without it being a spoiler for those of you who have yet to read the book.

Doops is continually seeking to find “real” Baptists – such as those of the 16th century who were known as Anabaptists and about whom he wrote a story during his time in military service during World War II.

As Doops correctly understood, those baptists (intentionally not capitalized) were pacifists, did not believe in the death penalty, and believed in the complete separation of church and state. That seemed to be what Doops also believed. And that was why he couldn’t be a conventional Baptist in the South.

So, Doops was probably somewhat autobiographical after all.

In an article published shortly after Campbell’s death, noted Baptist historian and author Bill Leonard wrote how Campbell was “obsessed with grace.” That seems to be a correct assessment. While he didn’t write about it directly, grace is an underlying theme of “The Glad River.”

As a result of God’s grace, undeserved and unreserved forgiveness, another of Campbell’s themes, is clearly seen in the novel.

James Wm. McClendon, Jr., was a prominent baptist theologian, born the same year as Campbell, although he died in 2000. (He is the one who emphasized being baptist with a small “b,” as I wrote about in a blog article found here.)

In his highly acclaimed “Ethics: Systematic Theology, Volume I,” McClendon cites a passage from The Glad River at the beginning of Part II. Then in writing about “The Politics of Forgiveness,” McClendon tells of Campbell’s discussion with his non-believing friend P.D. East.

As I wrote on this blog three years ago today, on one occasion, P. D. asked Will, “In ten words or less, what’s the Christian message?” Campbell’s pungent answer was, “We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway” (“Brother to a Dragonfly,” p. 220).

That is essentially the meaning of grace. And that is the type of God’s love and acceptance experienced by the beer-guzzling, rough-talking young men in “The Glad River”: Doops and his friends Kingston and “Model T.”

Whether we admit it or not, many of us “good Christians” think we are morally superior to others, such as, perhaps, fundamentalist Christians and bigoted Southerners with whom we disagree – or even superior to people like the young men in Campbell’s novel.

A serious reading of “The Glad River” can perhaps help us reflect on our pharisaicalism and even on our judgmental attitudes towards others, those bas—– whom God loves just as much as he loves us.

Note: This same blog article and more than 300 more can be found at theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com

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Aren’t You Hungry?

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Leroy Seat

For several years up until 1986 Burger King’s main advertising slogan was “Aren’t You Hungry?” The mug in the picture is said to be from the 1970s – and if you happen to have such a mug you’ll be happy to know that it is now a collector’s item and is reportedly worth $102.

ImageFor most of us, hunger is only a temporary discomfort which can be quickly remedied by stopping by Burger King or any of the numerous restaurants competing for our business.

But not everyone has the means to buy a Whopper, Big Mac, or whatever – although, sadly, many financially challenged people spend too much of what little money do they have on fattening fast-food items rather than on more nutritional food.

As we all know, there are multitudes of people around the world and in our own country for whom hunger is a chronic problem, not just a temporary discomfort.

In the U.S., though, buying food is a SNAP for many of the poor people – that’s SNAP as in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, long referred to as “food stamps.”

According to the DoA’s webpage,

SNAP offers nutrition assistance to millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families and provides economic benefits to communities. SNAP is the largest program in the domestic hunger safety net.

But, as most of you have heard, the government’s provision of funds for SNAP is facing the possibility of decisive cuts. Last week in a highly partisan vote, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm Bill without any provision for food stamps.

Hunger assistance has been part of the Farm Bill since the 1960s, mainly for political reasons. And now, also mainly for political reasons, funding for SNAP has been separated from the Farm Bill by the House.

That doesn’t mean that there will no longer be any food stamps. The Senate will most likely not pass the House bill, and the President would most probably veto it if they did. And the House will doubtlessly pass a bill making some funds available for SNAP, although far less than is in the current budget.

Most fiscal conservatives declare that there are far too many people getting food stamps. And there are a very large number of recipients. But the problem is not that so many are getting government assistance. The problem is that there are so many people living below the poverty line, or at least beneath 130% of that line.

In April of this year there were 47.5+ million people on SNAP, which was down slightly from March but up from the 46.2+ million in April 2012. And note this: 47% of the recipients are children below the age of 18.

The financial situation in the corporate world, though, is quite good now. Last Friday both the Dow and S&P 500 closed at all-time highs. Those of us with investments in stocks and bonds are quite happy with our portfolios at this time.

But those who live below 130% of the poverty line do not have investments. A record number now do have assistance from the government in order to buy food. But if the Tea Party Republicans and those who agree with them have their way, there will soon be considerably less money available for SNAP.

As a result, there will be a growing number of people, including many children, who, hearing the question, “Aren’t you hungry?” will have to answer “Yes” when they go to bed – night after night after night.

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In Praise of Toyohiko Kagawa

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Leroy Seat

He is no longer well known in the U.S., but there was a time, especially up to the early 1940s, when Toyohiko Kagawa was the best known Japanese in America, except for Emperor Hirohito.

Kagawa was born 125 years ago today, on July 10, 1888. Although sickly from the time he was a young man, he lived until April 1960. During his lifetime of nearly 72 years, he was creatively involved in a wide variety of activities.

He was a Christian evangelist, social reformer, labor activist, author, and peace activist. Because of his contributions in the two latter arenas, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 and 1948 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954, 1955 and 1956.

Kagawa studied at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1914 to 1917 and later made several other trips to the U.S., the most extensive one being for more than six months beginning in December 1935.

In the spring of 1936, he delivered the Rauschenbusch lectures at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School. (Those lectures were named for Walter Rauschenbusch, whom many consider the most prominent Baptist theologian of the 20th century.)

Kagawa’s Rauschenbusch lectures were published later that year under the title “Brotherhood Economics.” Even though (or because?) he was a Christian evangelist, Kagawa was deeply interested in economic matters, especially the plight of the many people in Japan (and the world) who were living in poverty.

He knew about being poor from his own experience.

KagawaWhen he was still a seminary student in 1909, he moved into the largest slum area of Kobe, and lived there for years. He freely shared what he had, including his small house, with needy people.

As a result, he contracted trachoma (a serious and contagious eye disease) from one of the poverty-stricken people he took into his home.

Because of his concern for the poor, Kagawa was active in the founding of the first labor unions in Japan soon after his return in 1917. Over the next several years he worked extensively in forming unions and cooperatives, and that was a major topic in his 1936 lectures.

Kagawa has been called a “reverse missionary.”

Bo Tao is a doctoral student at Yale University. His masters’ thesis at a university in Shanghai was on Kagawa, and his article in the July 2013 issue of “International Bulletin of Missionary Research” is titled “The Peacemaking Efforts of a Reverse Missionary: Toyohiko Kagawa before Pearl Harbor.”

Tao tells how President Roosevelt personally asked for Kagawa to be allowed to enter the United States, after he had been detained by immigration authorities in San Francisco in 1935. He was held, ostensibly, because of fear that his trachoma might be transmitted to others.

There were some, though, who opposed his involvement in labor unions and cooperatives. They were the same ones who objected to President Roosevelt’s implementation of New Deal policies during the Depression years of the 1930s.

A few years later, after being arrested and detained in Japan for nearly three weeks in 1940 because of his anti-war activities, Kagawa again visited the U.S. from April to August of 1941 in a “last ditch” effort to avert war in the Pacific.

 Unfortunately, as we know, his peace activities were unsuccessful. But not because he didn’t try.

There is much more I would like to write about Kagawa, who as early as 1939 had been deemed one of three “modern saints”—along with Gandhi in India and Schweitzer in Africa.

After all, I included Kagawa on my list of “top ten Christians” in my Sept. 15, 2010, blog posting.

Note: This posting (and over 300 more) can also be accessed at http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com/2013/07/in-praise-of-toyohiko-kagawa.html

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Celebrating the Ninth of July

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Leroy Seat

Yesterday was Independence Day in the U.S., but the Fourth of July is not one of my favorite holidays. For various reasons. But partly because the original Declaration of Independence, which was ratified on July 4, 1776, was the declaration of the independence (from British rule) primarily for white males in the Colonies.

While the words “all men are created equal” in the Preamble were later greatly emphasized by the abolitionists, slaves were certainly not considered equal to their white owners in 1776.

And while some might argue that “men” was a generic term, and not gender specific, women in fact were not given the right to vote until 144 years later!

Thus, rather than celebrating July 4, I suggest that it would perhaps be more appropriate for the people of this country to celebrate July 9. Why? Because the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on that day in 1868.14th AmendmentThrough the years we have all heard much about the First and the Fifth Amendments, and recently especially about the Second Amendment. But for some reason many of us, at least I, have not heard as much about the Fourteenth Amendment.

In fact, it was not until I was in Little Rock in January 2011 and saw words of the Fourteenth Amendment emblazoned on the wall of the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Visitor Center that I began to grasp the significance of that constitutional amendment.

On the Fourth of July many USAmericans pledge allegiance to the flag, which, by the way, was not written until 1892 and has been recited in its present version only since 1954. As you all know, that pledge closes with the words “with liberty and justice for all.”

But that was hardly the reality for many people in the U.S. for long, long after July 4, 1776. The Fourteenth Amendment greatly contributed toward making those words ring true.

And it is common to hear “The Star Spangled Banner,” the national anthem, sung on the Fourth of July. Even though we usually hear only the first verse sung, all four verses end with the words “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

But for decades after July 4, 1776, large numbers of people in the new nation were not free. But the Fourteenth Amendment helped to rectify that situation.

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment includes these significant words:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Those are the words that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in May 1954 and, consequently, to the integration of Central High School in Little Rock (and other schools) in 1957.

Ninety years earlier, in January 1867, Kansas became the ninth state to ratify the 14th Amendment, and Missouri did so just two weeks later. Then when South Carolina ratified it on July 9, 1868, that meant that 2/3 of the states had done so. The amendment, therefore, became a part of the Constitution.

Yes, we USAmericans have, and will, celebrate the Fourth of July this week, as we should. But even though it is not a national holiday, let’s also celebrate the Ninth of July and commemorate the ratification of the highly significant Fourteenth Amendment.

Note: This blog posting and more than 300 previous ones can be found at http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com

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“Failed Prophecies, Glorious Hopes”

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Leroy Seat

Rchard Rorty was an American philosopher who is not well known outside of academic circles. I certainly have not read him extensively and do not know a lot about him. But I have recently read, and have been impressed with, his 1998 essay titled “Failed Prophecies, Glorious Hopes.”

Rorty, who died six years ago this month (in 6/07) at the age of 75, was the grandson of the noted German-American theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, the son of the latter’s oldest child. But unlike his grandfather and mother, Rorty was a secular humanist rather than a Christian believer.

ImageStill, Rorty had great appreciation for his grandfather. That is evident from the afterword he wrote for “Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century,” the centennial re-issue of Rauschenbusch’s classic work “Christianity and the Social Crisis” (1907).

From his secular humanist viewpoint, Rorty compares the New Testament and the Communist Manifesto in the 1998 essay. He avers that

both documents are expressions of the same hope: that some day we shall be willing and able to treat the needs of all human beings with the respect and consideration with which we treat the needs of those closest to us, those whom we love.

 That glorious “hope for social justice,” says Rorty, is “the only basis for a worthwhile human life.” And, according to Rorty, the idea of social justice includes the hope that “the world might be changed so as to ensure that no one goes hungry while others have a surfeit.”

 Rorty realized that if social justice is to be achieved there will have to be some redistribution of wealth. Echoing the emphasis of his grandfather on the “social gospel,” non-Christian Rorty declares, “There is no way to take the New Testament seriously as a moral imperative . . . without taking the need for such redistribution equally seriously.”

 Then, alluding to the Communist Manifesto, Rorty writes,

To say that history is the history of class struggle is still true, if it is interpreted to mean that in every culture, under every form of government, and in every imaginable situation . . . the people who have already got their hands on money and power will lie, cheat and steal in order to make sure that they and their descendants monopolize both for ever.

But, alas, both the New Testament and the Manifesto of Marx and Engels have to this point been “failed prophecies.” We in the United States have no trouble seeing the miserable failure of Marxism in most of the countries where it became dominant.

 Cambodia is a good example. The Khmer Rouge was the Communist Party of Cambodia under the despotic rule of Pol Pot. It may have embraced a glorious hope for social justice in the beginning, but it is hard to imagine a more dismal failure. More than 2,000,000 Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.

Certainly the New Testament has not failed so miserably, especially in recent decades. And yet, from the time of Charlemagne through the era of European colonialism to rather recently, political and military rulers who have claimed to be Christians have led to the slaughter, enslavement, and oppression of people around the world.

I am not as pessimistic as Rorty was. Many Christians are still seeking social justice based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the New Testament. But, sadly, there are many others who are not. Rorty’s pessimism was not completely unfounded.

 Things would have been much different, though, if the ideas of Rorty’s grandfather had been implemented more widely, rather than being largely rejected by the fundamentalists of the 1920s and afterward.

[This blog posting (and more than 300 previous ones) can also be found at http://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com.]

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