Eric Blair, who wrote as George Orwell, was a prophet. Some recent news stories have proven that the anti-intellectual and totalitarian tendencies of which he wrote in 1984 (1948) thrive in the United States of America.
Sadly, these tendencies have thrived here since before the founding of the U.S.A. Anti-intellectualism has long been a feature of certain varieties of Evangelicalism and all forms of fundamentalism. Richard Hofstadter, a great historian, wrote Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1966). Religious historian Mark A. Noll, himself an Evangelical Presbyterian, wrote a scathing critique, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994). As for totalitarianism, some portion of the population has always preferred to obey orders from a dictator, whatever that person’s title is.
Two issues concern me, for the purposes of this post.
One is Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT hits the proverbial nail on the equally proverbial head. Institutionalized racism is a part of the past and the present of the United States of America. I can point to examples, starting with the colonial period, for I am a student of American history. CRT holds water, so to speak. I wish that it did not, but wishing that reality is different does not make it so. CRT has become a target for the racist part of the Right Wing in the U.S.A. Teaching CRT in public institutions of learning is now illegal in some states, including Tennessee. Tennessee is a state with a shameful record of violating academic freedom. One may recall that Scopes “Monkey Trial” (1925) was in Tennessee, which, at the time, outlawed the teaching of Evolution in public schools.
I am not suprised that CRT is a hot potato in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). This is a denomination founded in support of slavery in 1845. This is a denomination once known as the religious wing of the Ku Klux Klan. This is a denomination historically associated with White Southerners, most of whom, most of the time, have been unapologetic racists. I wonder how many of the anti-CRT Southern Baptist leaders and followers have read and taken to heart and mind the message of Hebrew prophets, who denounced systemic injustice.
To outlaw the teaching of a legitimate and germane academic or scientific theory is to violate academic freedom. As I have written, remaining on topic is a reasonable expectation and sound pedagogy. One should, for example, teach biology in a biology course. Likewise, CRT applies in history and various social sciences. So be it.
To state CRT in Augustinian terms, racism is the original sin of the United States of America. That sin remains in the present tense and influences social, economic, and political institutions.
To state CRT in Niebuhrian terms, racism defines the social, political, and economic climate and institutions which define our collective lives. Racism infects almost everything. And, whenever, we, individually or collectively, try to redress the sin of racism and its consequences, we may wind up accidentally furthering racism, despite ourselves.
The other issue is the new law regarding alleged indoctrination in public colleges and universities in Florida.
Recently, in the context of signing this bill into law, Governor Ron DeSantis spoke in favor of critical thinking and against liberal “indoctrination.” He signed into law a bill mandating an annual survey of the political opinions of faculty and students at public colleges and universities in that state. The explicit threat was that, if the proportion of opinions was too critical of DeSantis and his conservative camp, the state may reduce funding. Regardless of the minutae about whether answering the survey is mandatory or optional, the bill has crossed the line into Orwellian territory. The law inspires self-censorship and quashes freedom of academic expression.
DeSantis and his supporters mistake objectivity to mean agreeing with them, and “biased” to mean disagreeing with them. This attitude that, “I am right, anyone who agrees with me is objective, and anyone who disagrees with me must be biased,” is old. I recall hearing it frequently from conservative callers into open-lines segment on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal years ago, before I cut the cord. In reality, we are all biased. Those who agree with me are biased in the same way I am. An honest researcher or academic acknowledges his or her biases and tries to be as honest and accurate as possible, as far as the evidence goes.
On the bright side, my home state of Georgia is no longer the most embarrassing state in the Union. Florida and Tennessee have knocked us down the list. That is cold comfort, though. It is like repeating a Southern saying:
Thank God for Mississippi.
We’re not first in the high school dropout rate or last in the prevention of rickets! Woo hoo!
I pray for the day that more of our state governments resume making good policy and cease to embarrass us and trample the noblest American traditions.
I come from a particular perspective. I recall growing up as one of the marginalized, bookish people in the rural, conservative, and anti-intellectual communities in which I grew up. I recall growing in United Methodist parsonages full of books. Yet I also recall my father, who should have been my natural partner in intellectual and theological exploration, shutting me down. That still disappoints me about him.
I stand left of the center in 2021. This is an average score; I am very liberal on some counts, quite conservative on others, and moderate on others. Some people may be surprised to learn what some of my political and theological opinions are. So be it. But I refuse to censor myself in the matter of which of these I express in an academic or ecclesiastical setting. I am who I am. I may change my mind again about certain issues; I reserve the right to do so. Then I will be who I will be. And I will not censor myself then either.
Consistently, though, I stand for academic freedom. within the context of remaining on topic and remaining based in available evidence. This is non-negotiable.
Episcopal Bishop of Missouri, and Advocate for Social Justice
Bishop William Scartlett comes to this, A Great Cloud of Witnesses: An Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days, via The Interpreter’s Bible.
Scarlett, born in Columbus, Ohio, on October 3, 1883, grew up to become a courageous, progressive Christian leader on the vanguard of various moral causes. He was what certain cynical reactionaries of 2018 would have called a “social justice warrior.” So were Hebrew prophets. Our saint, influenced at an early age by Washington Gladden (1836-1918) and Walter Rauschenbush (1861-1918), proponents of the Social Gospel, graduated from Harvard University with his A.B. degree in 1905. Scarlett, unsure about whether to study for ministry or medicine, worked on a ranch in Nebraska for a year. He matriculated at the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1906, and graduated three years later. Our saint, spent the rest of his life in ordained ministry marked by a dedication to social justice dictated by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Scarlett cared deeply by outreach to the poor, the rights of industrial workers, civil rights, and other issues germane to human relations. He was, in order:
Assistant Rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church, New York, New York (1909-1911);
Scarlett was on the avant-garde of The Episcopal Church with regard to social ethics. He advocated for the liberalization of the denomination’s stance on remarriage after divorce. In 1946 our saint edited Christianity Takes a Stand, in which various authors took a stand against societal sins such as racial segregation and the federal government’s recent internment of West Coast Japanese Americans. Although the House of Deputies, at the General Convention of 1946, consented without debate to sponsor the publication of the book, the majority of Episcopalians were not ready to espouse those positions yet.
Scarlett, a Low Church Episcopalian and self-described Liberal Evangelical who wore a tie in lieu of a clerical collar, was a natural ecumenist. He cooperated with members of other Christian denominations as easily as he did with Jews. At Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis, our saint scandalized many Anglo-Catholics by encouraging interdenominational Eucharists. He also scrapped plans for a new Episcopal hospital in the city when he learned of a similar Presbyterian plan. The result was cooperation, not competition, in the form of St. Luke’s Episcopal-Presbyterian Hospital. He also favored the merger of The Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in the 1940s. The proposal did not survive the late 1940s. It would probably have been impractical anyway.
(Aside: I mean no disrespect to any Presbyterians, but the denominational cultures and certain theological-liturgical factors are too different for merger to be practical. I suppose that many Presbyterians agree with that assessment. Cooperation of many issues is feasible and desirable, however.)
Scarlett retired in late 1952. His successor as Bishop of Missouri was Arthur Carl Lichtenberger (1900-1968), later the Presiding Bishop of the denomination.
In retirement Scarlett wrote the exposition on the Book of Jonah for The Interpreter’s Bible. He wrote, in part:
If God has a controversy with his people, it is because there has been in our world too little concern for our brother, too little recognition that his fate is bound up in ours, and ours in his, even to the least, too much forgetting that word of old, “We are members of one another” (Eph. 4:25) and if one member suffers, “all the members suffer with it” (I Cor. 12:26). A plain fact of the nineteen-thirties is that Hitler climbed to power on the backs of the unemployed in Germany, and it was this frustration, this sense of uselessness, in millions of lives that made his way easy.
—The Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VI (1956), 877
That is a chilling text in 2018.
The resurgence of fascism and of authoritarianism in general has been current reality in the world, from the Philippines to Europe to Brazil to Turkey to Europe for a few years now. Many of the enablers of fascist and other authoritarian leaders have been professing Christians. The call to “Make America Great Again” has echoed pre-World War II movements to make Italy and Germany great again. The rhetoric of “America First,” originated before World War II in an openly anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi movement to keep the United States out of that war, has returned, still with racist overtones. Calls for U.S. society and government to practice the Golden Rule have become subversive as many professing Christians have chosen to ignore the demands of that great commandment and embraced xenophobia and nativism, largely out of fear.
I encourage you, O reader, to read Scarlett’s exposition on the Book of Jonah and to oppose–resist–the deplorable resurgence of fascism and of authoritarianism in general.
Scarlett, aged 89 years, died in Castine, Maine, on March 28, 1973. His wife, Leah Oliver Van Riper (b. 1889), had predeceased him in 1965.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
OCTOBER 3, 2018 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF GEORGE KENNEDY ALLEN BELL, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF CHICHESTER
THE FEAST OF ALBERTO RAMENTO, PRIME BISHOP OF THE PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENT CHURCH
THE FEAST OF SAINT GERARD OF BROGNE, ROMAN CATHOLIC ABBOT
THE FEAST OF JOHN RALEIGH MOTT, U.S. METHODIST LAY EVANGELIST, AND ECUMENICAL PIONEER
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Holy and righteous God, you created us in your image.
Help us grace to contend fearlessly against evil and to make no peace with oppression.
Help us, like your servant William Scarlett, to work for justice among people and nations,
to the glory of your name, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Hosea 2:18-23
Psalm 94:1-15
Romans 12:9-21
Luke 6:20-36
–Adapted from Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), 60
This post, as of the drafting and publication of this post, is slightly anticipatory. Documentation tells us that Pope Benedict XVI declared Paul VI a Venearble in 2012 and that Pope Francis beatified Montini in 2014. According to news reports, Pope Francis is set to canonize Paul VI on October 14, 2018. Given that fact, plus the reality that, for me, differences among Venerables, Blesseds, and full Saints are purely semantic, I choose to proceed with calling the deceased Supreme Pontiff St. Paul VI, although he will remain a Blessed Paul VI for about one more month.
The feast day for St. Paul VI is September 26, the anniversary of his birth. Usually a saint’s feast day falls on the anniversary of his or her death, but that date, for Montini, is the Feast of the Transfiguration.
Giovanni Battista Montini, born in Concescio, Italy, on September 26, 1897, came from a devout family. His father was an attorney and a member of parliament. Montini, devoted to his mother, became a priest on May 29, 1920. Graduate studies in Rome ensued.
Montini’s star rose quickly in the Church. In 1922 he joined the Vatican Secretariat of State. He, the Nuncio to Poland from May to November 1923, resigned for health reasons. On July 8, 1931, our saint became a domestic prelate to the Holy See. Montini, assistant to Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) from December 13, 1937, worked closely with Pacelli/Pius XII until 1954.
Montini must have severely offended the Holy Father, for Pius XII exiled our saint to Milan. On November 1, 1954, Montini began his duties as the Archbishop of Milan, far from being a plumb assignment. In Milan, Montini was the “workers’ archbishop,” winning the approval of disaffected industrial workers. He presided over an archdiocese still recovering from World War II. Furthermore, Montini’s ecumenism became evident when he conducted dialogues with a group of Anglicans–a revolutionary practice prior to the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II).
In 1958 Pope St. John XXIII succeeded the late Pius XII. On December 5, 1958, St. John XXIII made Montini a Cardinal. (Five years prior our saint had declined a similar offer from Pius XII, who had never repeated the offer.) Cardinal Montini and St. John XXIII were two of the primary shapers of Vatican II. St. John XXIII died in June 1963. The conclave elected Cardinal Montini to succeed him; our saint became Pope Paul VI. He presided over the final sessions of Vatican II.
St. Paul VI was doctrinally conservative and socially radical. That has been a combination common in Christian history. Many of the English Tractarians, for example, were open about their Christian Socialism. Actual Jewish and Christian orthodoxy has, by definition, been conservative. It has also challenged entrenched social structures and institutions, ended chattel slavery in much of the world, condemned the economic exploitation of the poor by the rich, championed labor unions, and opposed racial segregation.
If one is to understand the legacy of St. Paul VI, one must grasp the combination of theological orthodoxy and social and political radicalism. What, for example, is more theologically orthodox and, sadly, socially and politically radical than the Golden Rule?
Life in the Roman Catholic Church since 1965 has been, depending on one’s perspective, either too liberal or too conservative. St. Paul VI, who met with Archbishops of Canterbury Michael Ramsey (in 1966) and Donald Coggan (in 1977) and, in 1965, with Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras, lifted the mutual anathemas dating to 1054, angered many traditionalists. St. Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967), which condemned the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the Third World and committed the Church to addressing that problem constructively, was consistent with the Law, the Prophets, Jesus, and Pope Leo XIII. Humanae Vitae (1968), which maintained the condemnation of artificial contraception, has been controversial from day one. The decision to sell the papal tiara and give the proceeds to help the poor was at least a good gesture. St. Paul VI sought to balance innovation and the integrity of ecclesiastical teaching. The extent to which he succeeded has never ceased to be a topic of disagreement.
St. Paul VI, aged 80 years, died on August 6, 1978.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
SEPTEMBER 12, 2018 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF FREDERICK J. MURPHY, U.S. ROMAN CATHOLIC BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
THE FEAST OF SAINT FRANCISCUS CH’OE KYONG-HWAN, KOREAN ROMAN CATHOLIC CATECHIST AND MARTYR, 1839; SAINTS LAWRENCE MARY JOSEPH IMBERT, PIERRE PHILIBERT MAUBANT, AND JACQUES HONORÉ CHASTÁN, FRENCH ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS, MISSIONARIES TO KOREA, AND MARTYRS, 1839; SAINT PAUL CHONG HASANG, KOREAN ROMAN CATHOLIC SEMINARIAN AND MARTYR, 1839; AND SAINTS CECILIA YU SOSA AND JUNG HYE, KOREAN ROMAN CATHOLIC MARTYRS, 1839
THE FEAST OF KASPAR BIENEMANN, GERMAN LUTHERAN MINISTER AND HYMN WRITER
THE FEAST OF WILLIAM JOSIAH IRONS, ANGLICAN PRIEST, HYMN WRITER, AND HYMN TRANSLATOR; AND HIS DAUGHTER, GENEVIEVE MARY IRONS, ROMAN CATHOLIC HYMN WRITER
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O God, our heavenly Father, who raised up your faithful servant St. Paul VI
to be a bishop in your Church and to feed your flock:
Give abundantly to all bishops the gifts of your Holy Spirit,
that they may minister in your household as true servants of Christ and stewards of your divine mysteries;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Acts 20:17-35
Psalm 84 or 84:7-11
Ephesians 3:14-21
Matthew 24:42-47
–Adapted from Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (2010), 719
ANNA ELLISON BUTLER ALEXANDER (1865?-SEPTEMBER 24, 1947)
African-American Episcopal Deaconess in Georgia, and Educator
Deaconess Anna Ellison Butler Alexander comes to this, my Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days, via The Episcopal Church.
The history of this feast exemplifies how many commemorations rise to the denominational level in The Episcopal Church.
The feast rose from the diocesan level. In 1998 Henry Irving Louttit, Jr., the Bishop of Georgia, declared Deaconess Anna Alexander a saint of Georgia, with the feast day of September 24. The feast rose to the national level at the General Convention of 2015, which added the commemoration to A Great Cloud of Witnesses (2016), the expanded version of the official calendar of saints contained in Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006 (2007). The General Convention of 2018 approved the greatly expanded official calendar of saints, Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2018 (as of the writing of this post, available as a PDF, pending the final, published version next year), with the deaconess included.
As with many other Southern African-Americans of the time, the date–the year, even–of Anna’s birth remained uncertain, due to the lack of written records. Records of the Diocese of Georgia listed her year of birth as 1878. In 1947 her death certificate listed 1881 as her year of birth. Anna’s birth actually occurred shortly after the end of the Civil War. Most recent sources have given 1865 as her year of birth.
Above: Coastal Georgia, 1951
Scanned from Hammond’s Complete World Atlas (1951)
Our saint was the youngest of eleven children of former slaves James and Daphne Alexander (married in 1841), of the Pierce Butler Plantation on St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. Daphne was a child of plantation rape; her biological father was Roswell King, Jr. James, or “Aleck,” was a skilled carpenter and builder, as well as Butler’s personal assistant. The Alexanders instilled the value of education into their children, and modeled it. James, for example, taught himself to read and write. The couple, when slaves, violated the law against educating slaves; they taught their children.
Above: Glynn and McIntosh Counties, Georgia, 1951
Scanned from Hammond’s Complete World Atlas (1951)
Anna, raised in The Episcopal Church, found the public education available to her in Glynn County, Georgia, substandard. (The inadequate education of African Americans in the Postbellum South was often a matter of policy.) It was fortunate, then, that the Alexanders provided informal education for their children. Our saint, seeking to help others less fortunate than herself, became a teacher at the parochial school (attached to St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church, Darien, Georgia) her sister, Mary Alexander Mann, had founded. (Mary’s husband, Ferdinand M. Mann, was the Vicar of St. Cyprian’s Church from 1892 to 1914.) Many also taught at the parochial school, as did another sister, Dora. The school was, for a time, a vital to the education of African Americans in Darien.
Anna’s base of operations for most of her life was the poor, rural community of Pennick, in Glynn County. In 1894 she prompted the founding of a mission, Church of the Good Shepherd. She spent 1894-1897 studying at St. Paul’s Normal School (later College), Lawrenceville, Virginia. Episcopal priest James Solomon Russell (1857-1935) had founded the school in 1888. (St. Paul’s College closed in 2013). Our saint, back in Pennick, rebuilt the congregation and, in 1901, founded the parochial school, which grew from one room to two rooms, with an apartment for the deaconess.
The Diocese of Georgia, founded in 1823, divided in 1907; the Diocese of Atlanta formed to the northwest of the rump Diocese of Georgia. Bishop Cleland Kinloch Nelson, based in Atlanta when he was the Bishop of Georgia (1892-1907), remained in the capital city and became the first Bishop of Atlanta (1907-1917). Nelson was a relatively liberal white Georgian of the time. He disapproved of Jim Crow, but knew he could not change the system alone, so he at least tried to keep his diocese integrated. Nelson also encouraged African-American missions. The bishop was not all-powerful, however; he could not override the collective will of the majority of lay people. So, in 1907, after the as the Diocese of Atlanta was forming, the Diocese of Georgia was segregating. Nevertheless, one of Nelson’s final acts as the Bishop of Georgia was to consecrate Anna Alexander as a deaconess–the only African-American deaconess in the denomination. He did this on Friday, May 13, 1907, at the second annual meeting of the Council of Colored Churchmen.
The rump Diocese of Georgia was officially segregated for four decades. During most of that time policy was to discourage African-American missions. In 1907-1946 there were no African-American delegates to the annual diocesan conventions. The Council of Colored Churchmen, formed in 1906, barely had any representation on diocesan committees. Bishop Frederick Focke Reese (in office 1908-1936), a racist who delivered paternalistic addresses to African-American clergymen, neglected African-American congregations and schools financially. Therefore, much financial assistance had to come from other sources, official (such as the denomination) and individual. Anna was an effective fund raiser in this context. The deaconess provided an education to many African-American youth and shepherded them into further education–some at colleges and others at technical schools. She also worked as a cook at Camp Reese, the diocesan, whites-only summer camp on St. Simon’s Island, for a number of years. The racially segregated Diocese of Georgia named a cabin after her in 1938. The deaconess, while working as a cook for white campers at Camp Reese, brought groups of African-American youth to St. Simon’s Island and provided a sort of summer camp for them.
Bishop Middleton Stuart Barnwell (in office 1936-1954), unlike Bishop Reese, took an interest in African-American missions. He spent diocesan funds to replace or repair buildings. And, in 1947, he welcomed African Americans to the first racially integrated diocesan convention in four decades.
During the Great Depression Good Shepherd, Pennick, was a distribution center for federal and private aid in Glynn County. Anna, who ministered to her neighbors without regard to race, was in charge of distribution. She wrote:
I am to see everyone gets what they need….some folk don’t need help now and I know who they are. The old people and the children, they need the most….When I tell some people they can’t get help just now…that others come first, they get mad, a little, but I don’t pay no mind and soon they forget to be mad.
The deaconess earned respect in her community and vicinity; many white men removed their hats in deference when she walked past them.
Anna died on September 24, 1947. She was either in her late seventies or early eighties. She remained mostly forgotten for many years. The Episcopal Church in Georgia, 1733-1957 (1960), by Henry Thompson Malone, never mentioned the deaconess’s name. Even the otherwise excellent Black Episcopalians in Georgia: Strife, Struggle and Salvation (1980), by Charles Lwanga Hoskins, frequently misidentified her as Dora. (Father Hoskins was a wonderful man, a charming priest, and a fine homilist. When I was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church, Statesboro, Georgia, he was a supply priest, filling in when the Rector was away. Memories of some of his sermons have never ceased to edify me spiritually. Hoskins did, however, often mistake Anna for her sister, Dora, in his book, still an invaluable source for this post.) In recent years, however, Anna’s legacy has become more prominent, fortunately. It has become sufficiently prominent that, in January 2018, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, an African American, visited Good Shepherd, Pennick.
May that legacy become more prominent.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
SEPTEMBER 4, 2018 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF PAUL JONES, EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF UTAH, AND PEACE ACTIVIST; AND HIS COLLEAGUE, JOHN NEVIN SAYRE, EPISCOPAL PRIEST AND PEACE ACTIVIST
THE FEAST OF E. F. SCHUMACHER, GERMAN-BRITISH ECONOMIST AND SOCIAL CRITIC
THE FEAST OF JOSEPH AND MARY GOMER, U.S. UNITED BRETHREN MISSIONARIES IN SIERRA LEONE
THE FEAST OF WILLIAM MCKANE, SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER AND BIBLICAL SCHOLAR
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O God, you called Anna Alexander as a deaconess in your Church
and sent her as teacher and evangelist to the people of Georgia:
Grant us the humility to go wherever you send
and the wisdom to teach the word of Christ to whomever we meet,
that all may come to the enlightenment which you intend for your people;
through Jesus Christ, our Teacher and Savior. Amen.
—A Great Cloud of Witnesses: A Calendar of Commemorations (2016)
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O God, who called Anna Alexander as a deaconess in your Church:
Grant us the humility to go wherever you send
and the wisdom to teach the word of Christ to whomever we meet,
that all may come to the enlightenment you intend for your people;
through Jesus Christ, our Teacher and Savior. Amen.
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL (MARCH 3, 1819-SEPTEMBER 10, 1898)
U.S. African-American Episcopal Priest, Missionary, and Moral Philosopher
++++++++++++++++++++++++
The hand of God is on the black man, in all the lands of his distant sojourn, for the good of Africa.
–Alexander Crummell
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September 10 is the Feast of Alexander Crummell in The Episcopal Church.
Crummell, who lived during a time of slavery then de jure segregation, contended with racism throughout his life. He, born in New York, New York, on March 3, 1819, was a child of abolitionists Charity Hicks (born free) and Boston Crummell (a former slave). Our saint, a well-educated person and a recognized intellectual by 1840, when he was 21 years old, could not matriculate at The General Theological Seminary, Manhattan, because of the color of his skin. Nevertheless, he successfully prepared for the priesthood and, in 1844, became a priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts. Yet, due to official racism, Crummell could not participate in diocesan conventions.
Crummell spent 1848-1853 in England, studying moral philosophy at Queen’s College, Cambridge, and earning a B.A. degree. Our saint, well grounded in Western philosophy, incorporated the concepts of natural rights and intergenerational responsibility into his moral philosophy. Stephen Thompson has written a summary of that moral philosophy at The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Except for visits to the United States of America, mainly to encourage African-American immigration to Africa, Crummell lived and worked in Liberia from 1853 to 1872. There he was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Liberia College. He hoped to build a Christian republic, with The Episcopal Church as the national church. Liberian politics dashed Crummell’s hopes, though, and he returned to the United States.
Crummell, back in the United States, had much work to do. He became the Rector of St. Mary’s Chapel for Colored People, Washington, D.C. In 1875 he founded St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C., the oldest African-American Episcopal parish in the national capital city. Our saint retired in 1894.
Crummell founded the Convocation of Colored Clergy, a predecessor of the Union of Black Episcopalians, to oppose the proposed “Sewanee Canon” at the General Convention of 1883. Some Southern bishops and other churchmen wanted to segregate the Church further by creating a non-geographical diocese for African Americans. This was not a unique idea; other denominations took similar actions. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, spun off the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church in 1870. The Methodist Church (1939-1968) had its non-geographical Central Jurisdiction, as well as five geographical jurisdictions. The (Southern) Presbyterian Church in the United States (1861-1983) spun off the African-American Presbyterian Church in 1898 then reabsorbed it as the Snedecor Memorial Synod, separate from the other synods, usually defined by state boundaries, in 1917. Although the General Convention defeated the “Sewanee Canon,” many Southern dioceses acted on their own, subsequently curtailing African-American involvement in diocesan conventions. The usual practice was to create a racially defined convocation, which sent a handful of delegates to the diocesan convention. In other dioceses, there were no African-American delegates at the diocesan convention. The Diocese of Georgia, for example, was segregated at the convention level from 1907 to 1947. The priest and hymn writer F. Bland Tucker (1895-1984), Rector of Christ Church, Savannah, proposed the canon that readmitted African-American delegates to the diocesan convention.
Crummell remained active in retirement. He taught at Howard University, Washington, D.C., in 1895-1897. In 1897 he founded and became the first president of the American Negro Academy, Washington, D.C., with W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963) as one of the vice presidents. The American Negro Academy disbanded in 1924.
Crummell married twice. His first wife, whom he wed in 1841, was Sarah Mabitt Elston, who died in 1878. Our saint married Jennie Simpson in 1880.
Crummell, aged 77 years, died in Red Bank, New Jersey, on September 10, 1898.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
AUGUST 13, 2018 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, JR., EPISCOPAL PRIEST AND HYMNODIST; AND HIS NEPHEW, JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, III, EPISCOPAL PRIEST AND MUSICIAN
THE FEAST OF ELIZABETH PAYSON PRENTISS, U.S. PRESBYTERIAN HYMN WRITER
THE FEAST OF JEREMY TAYLOR, ANGLICAN BISHOP OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE
THE FEAST OF JOHN BAJUS, U.S. LUTHERAN MINISTER AND HYMN TRANSLATOR
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Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you for your servant Alexander Crummell,
whom you called to preach the Gospel to those who were far off and to those who were near.
Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom,
that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 2:7-11, 17-18
Psalm 19:7-11
James 1:2-5
Mark 4:1-10, 13-20
—Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (2010), 573
That argument is objectively false. First, a review of law-making reveals many examples of explicit appeals to morality in legislative proposals, many of which have become laws. I argue that if someone has done something, doing it must be possible. Second, all acts of legislation are examples of legislating morality. One might legitimately question many of the moral codes informing much legislation, but the existence of those moral codes is objective reality.
In the United States of America perhaps the example most frequently cited to support the objectively false claim that one cannot legislate morality is the prohibition of liquor (1920-1933). (Interestingly, the Eighteenth Amendment (1920) to the Constitution barred the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor, but not the consumption of it. One could theoretically drink it legally so long as one did not purchase, manufacture, or transport it. There were also exceptions in the law for sacramental wine, a large loophole.) The failed experiment of Prohibition, rooted in morality, nativism, and xenophobia, actually serves best as an example of the law of unexpected consequences more than anything else. I posit that, in the 1920s and 1930s, the most enthusiastic supporters of Prohibition were the bosses of organized crime, men profiting beyond the most extravagant dreams of avarice from opportunities the law created.
The real questions, then, are when legislating morality is more effective, when it is less effective, and when it is ineffective. One might point (correctly) to the formal end of race-based chattel slavery via the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) to the Constitution of the United States of America as both necessary and morally correct. Likewise, one might also point to all expansions of civil rights, from women’s suffrage to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Voting Rights Act (1965) to fair housing laws and beyond. Whenever discrimination is part of the law, part of the remedy must also be part of the law. But to what extent? The answer to that question can be difficult to discern. Furthermore, although laws by themselves cannot change attitudes, they can change actions. The change in actions can alter attitudes eventually.
Ultimately we in our societies–especially in the global West–need what the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking on April 4, 1967, called
a radical revolution of values.
We need to value people more than property, wealth, and, for lack of a better word, things. We need to move beyond lip service to that proposition and change attitudes for the better, and therefore improve society. If we do that, the need to legislate morality will decrease.
CLARENCE LEONARD JORDAN (JULY 29, 1912-OCTOBER 29, 1969)
Southern Baptist Minister and Witness for Civil Rights
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
He took the Bible seriously.
–United Methodist Minister James Howell of Charlotte, North Carolina, on Clarence Jordan, 2012
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Deeds reveal creeds. Orthodoxy is right doctrine. Orthopraxy is correct practice. The first necessarily leads to the second. Such as one thinks, one is.
Clarence Jordan (pronounced JER-dun) came from rural western Georgia. He, born in Talbotton, Georgia, on July 29, 1912, was a son of James Weaver Jordan and Maude Josey. While growing up our saint wondered how church-going Christians could support Jim Crow laws. He studied Agriculture at The University of Georgia, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in 1933. While at UGA, Jordan edited the Georgia Agriculturalist and served as the state president of the Baptist Student Union. In 1933 our saint also matriculated at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky (Th.M., 1936; Ph.D., 1939). He, ordained in 1934, served as a pastor of several rural congregations while pursuing degrees. In July 1936 Jordan married Florence Kroeger (d. 1987) of Louisville; the couple had four children.
Jordan could have taught on the college level or been minister of a large church, but he chose instead to found (with Martin and Mabel England) the Koinonia Farm south of Americus, Georgia, in Sumter County, in 1942. Southwestern Georgia has long been a reactionary place (I know; I used to live there.), so Koinonia Farm was especially radical in its setting. The model for the farm came from the Acts of the Apostles; there was a common treasury. Jordan and company practiced radical egalitarianism and lived in a racially integrated community. They were also pacifistic. Jordan considered racism, discrimination, and economic injustice sinful. He was truly a counter-cultural figure. The farm became a target for violence, ostracism, and economic boycotts. Were they communists? No. Were they patriotic? Yes. They took the Bible seriously.
Above: Fellowship Baptist Church, Americus, Georgia, June 13, 2018
Photographer = Kenneth Randolph Taylor
The presence of a mixed-race group at a church in Americus, Georgia, was controversial into at least the 1970s. In 1973, for example, the deacons of First Baptist Church voted to bar African Americans from joining the congregation. Fellowship Baptist Church formed in protest. (It is still one of the more liberal congregations in town.) One time in the 1960s the senior pastor of First Baptist Church visited Koinonia Farm and invited the people there to attend that night’s revival service. They accepted the invitation. Soon First Baptist Church was looking for a new senior minister. Meanwhile, across the street, at First Methodist Church, men clad in their Sunday best kept African Americans from attending Sunday morning services. They turned away Jordan and a group from Koinonia.
In 1968 Koinonia Farm reorganized as Koinonia Partners.
Jordan, a sought-after speaker on the liberal lecture circuit, as well as a friend of Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote the Cotton Patch Versions of New Testament books. Thus Jerusalem became Atlanta, Nazareth became Valdosta, et cetera. Jordan was writing another Cotton Patch Version on October 29, 1969, when he died of a heart attack at Koinonia Partners. He was 57 years old.
Habitat for Humanity, founded by Millard Fuller (1935-2009) and Linda Fuller, is part of the continuing legacy of Clarence Jordan’s radical experiment in Christian community. (The Fullers were two of the Koinonia Partners.)
Koinonia continues, fortunately.
KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR
JUNE 11, 2018 COMMON ERA
THE FEAST OF SAINT BARNABAS THE APOSTLE, COWORKER OF SAINT PAUL THE APOSTLE
Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.
(This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip,
Go over to this chariot and join it.
So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked,
Do you understand what you are reading?
He replied,
How can I, unless someone guides me?
And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe this generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.
The eunuch asked Philip,
About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?
Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said,
Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?
He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
Psalm 22:24-30 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):
24 My praise is of him in the great assembly;
I will perform my vows in the presence of those who worship him.
25 The poor shall eat and be satisfied,
and those who seek the LORD shall praise him:
“May your heart love for ever!”
26 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations shall bow before him.
27 For kingship belongs to the LORD;
he rules over the nations.
28 To him alone who sleep in the earth bow down in worship;
all who go down to the dust fall before him.
29 My soul shall live for him;
my descendants shall serve him;
they shall be known as the LORD’s for ever.
30 They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn
the saving deeds that he has done.
1 John 4:7-21 (New Revised Standard Version):
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
John 15:1-8 (New Revised Standard Version):
Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
The Collect:
Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
There is a classic scholarly work about racism in Southern United States religion; the title of the book is In His Image, But…. As a student of U.S., Southern, and religious history, I know well the arguments people have made, quoting the Bible, to justify slavery (to 1865) and enforced segregation (well into the Twentieth Century). Many of the arguments for segregation were recycled from the days of slavery.
Of all the assigned readings for this Sunday, 1 John 4:7-21 stands out most in my mind. This reading continues an earlier theme in that letter: We ought to love one another. Here, in 1 John, we read:
…those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (4:21b)
Racial and ethnic differences are frequently quite obvious to any sighted person. This, I suppose, helps explain why racism has been and remains common (even though many racists prefer to speak on code words). Yet, to quote, 1 John 4 again, we cannot love God, whom we have not seen and cannot see, if we hate our fellow human beings, whom he have seen and can see.
St. Philip the Deacon reached out to the Ethiopian eunuch, a visibly different man, and helped him to become grafted onto the vine of Jesus. Psalm 22 reminds us that all the Earth belongs to God. Many people are quite different from anyone of us, and not all cultural differences will melt away. Nor should they; variety is the spice of life. We will retain our separate cultural and subcultural identities, which is healthy so long as we remember that we have one common identity in God, namely in Jesus, if we are Christians.
“Perfect love casts our fear,” we read in 1 John 4:18. Out of fear we have one another, bomb each other, dehumanize and demonize one another, and behave in other inhumane ways toward each other. The activities do not reflect the love of Jesus or bring glory to God.
May we know whose we are (God’s) and act accordingly, loving ourselves as bearers of the divine image and our fellow human beings as the same. May we love our neighbors as ourselves. It is that simple and that challenging.
SUNDRY THOUGHTS 
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