Parish, the Thought. David B. Bowman
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I spoke of the hidden aspect of God in some of scripture: portions of the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, Habakkuk, and Jonah.
In what I regard as a paragraph worth repeating, I said:
What may the preacher say in this hazardous context? Probably what he has always said. Come. Be a believer. Take the risk of faith. God wills to be known even in his absence. Take the risk of fanaticism. The world’s worst psychotic dreams have been acted out in God’s name. The world’s worst crimes have been committed for the sake of God. Take the risk of intolerance. Faith carries no guarantee of wealth, power, fame, or even friendship. Take the risk of self–righteousness. People still say to me, “I believe in God,” as if some merit accrued to them on that account.
I feel it today, even as I felt it fifty years ago when I preached from the Park Church pulpit. People seem unbothered by the God question. Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, seem anachronistic. They struggle with believer’s hangover. As Gabriel Vahanian, a French Protestant theologian, said in 1961:
Modern man lives in a world of immanence. If he is the prey of anxiety, it is not because he feels guilty before a just God. Nor is it because he fails to explain the justice and love of God in the obvious presence of evil and injustice . . . Now man has declared God not responsible and not relevant to human self–knowledge. The existence of God, no longer questioned, has become useless to man’s predicament and its resolution.7
I am not sure how many in the pews on that Trinity Sunday experienced the hiddenness, even the absence, of God. Perhaps the preacher spoke to himself and made an effort to find resourceful answers. How many times the person in the pulpit answers questions those in the pew do not ask!
I closed the homily titled, “God,” by focus on the Christ figure, who has ever been my recourse. I said:
The Christian way is modeled after one who, humanly speaking, risked it all and lost on the cross. “My God, why have you forsaken me?” It is to this figure that those of us plagued by the God question turn. In this time, when “something has happened in the consciousness of Western humanity,” we must once again grapple with the one who said, “He that has seen me has seen the Father.”
A Sort of Forgiveness
Amnesty, a term garnered from the Greek, amnestia, meaning forgetfulness, holds slightly less weight than pardon. To pardon is to forgive, to say to someone or some group, as far as I am concerned you no longer stand guilty of the offense. Amnesty, on the other hand, relates exclusively to the punishment phase. It means to say, though you have acted in a wrongful fashion, I will pass over it and treat you as if it never happened.
An example of the dilemma faced by young men in the Vietnam conflict era appeared in a letter to “The Olympian,” an Olympia, Washington, newspaper, sometime in the early 1970s as follows:
I left America last on June 12, 1969, just four days after I graduated. It was indeed a difficult decision to leave the United States since I am an American citizen and love my country greatly. I have always tried to be loyal to my country and am proud of my citizenship. But for personal moral reasons I could not support the military role of my country in Vietnam. I applied for the status of Conscientious Objector but was turned down. After seeking counseling from some WSU staff members, I finally decided to emigrate to Norway rather than be drafted.
Thomas V. Hansen
Bankveien 9 F
1347 Hosle
Oslo, Norway
Discussion of the issue swayed back and forth in the nation. President Nixon, continuing to prosecute the war, refused to countenance amnesty for those many thousands living above the border. A number of church and political leaders pressed for administrative action. The National Council of Churches Board adopted a statement calling for amnesty for all who were in legal jeopardy because of the war in Indochina, except those who had committed acts of violence.
On March 5, 1972, from the pulpit I took up this hot topic of U.S. men who had crossed the border to Canada or elsewhere in order to escape the jeopardy of the draft to service in the Vietnam conflict. My text, Matt 6:9–15, derived from the Sermon on the Mount in which we hear Jesus teach his disciples to pray, “and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” (It’s clear, since my topic was amnesty, that I ignored the nuanced difference between forgiveness and amnesty.)
In my pulpit word, I noted several objections to the fairness of forgiveness or amnesty. I asked, for example, “If I forgive my brother who has wronged me, how will that be fair to my brother who has not?” To put that in the public consciousness of the time, one might ask, “If I tell a U.S. citizen residing in Canada he can return to the USA without fear of legal repercussions, how is that just to the parents of a young man who obeyed the law, donned the uniform, and lost his life in a Vietnamese rice paddy?”
In response to that legitimate question, I pointed to the elder son in the parable of the father who had two sons, he who refused to be merciful toward his brother (Luke 15:11-32). I also pointed to the inclusive outreach to the south of President Lincoln following the Civil War, in order to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” I could have pointed to the reconciliation, led by Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, in which the truth of Afrikaner aggression against the Coloreds, Asiatics, and Bantus, once confessed, received the amazing response tantamount to forgiveness or amnesty.
So I asked, “Can we find it within ourselves to receive in forgiveness those who have become legal outlaws? And who is going to grant them forgiveness for forcing them to decide between legality and conscience? Do we have to wait a century after the fact before we can respect acts of conscience?”
Picking up the topic in the next church newsletter, I referred to the phrase I learned from the ethicist, James Gustafson, about the church as “a community of moral discourse.” Admitting that amnesty might well be a hot topic, especially for a minister less than one year into the life of the parish, I expressed satisfaction that I received few, “That’s nice, Rev.,” sorts of comments at the door, but found genuine dialogue instead. I knew I remained outside the advice of the Senior Minister, Rev. McKinney, when he told me, “I’ve learned never to say anything controversial from the pulpit.”
On his second day in office, January 21, 1977, President Jimmy Carter, one of the most profoundly Christian men ever to occupy the White House, issued a presidential pardon to those who from August 4, 1964, to March 18, 1973, chose Canadian or other exile, or other options, over conflict in Vietnam. The pardon did not apply to the hundreds of thousands active duty military personnel who went AWOL or deserted during the course of the conflict. Thousands benefited from that action. Perhaps a volume of words from other pulpits, based on Matt 6:9–15, played some role in the President’s action.
I realize that nowhere in that Sunday’s discourse did I grapple with the conundrum featured in Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society, namely that a straight forward moral act of an individual might not be readily available to a nation state. I note that such a caveat did not deter the good Baptist, Jimmy Carter.
On February 5, 1973, I spoke again at length on the call for amnesty. The Vietnam conflict was drawing to a close. I titled my pulpit word, “Let Bygones be Bygones.”
In response, I received a gracious letter from an active member of the congregation, a World War II veteran. Virgil Michaelson noted the problems surrounding the Vietnam conflict but he insisted that if persons had fled to Canada or Sweden in the 1940s we might not have freedom now to discuss openly these sensitive issues. He spoke of his own “unbearable months” in Nazi prison camp. For those who avoided the call to serve, he was not willing to overlook it.
This respectful letter, concluded “in the Christian Spirit” it was intended, I still have in my keeping. This was an instance of the church as a “community of moral discourse” for which James Gustafson appealed. I do not have a copy of my reply. I hope it was as gracious as Virgil’s letter.