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.
Mary Had a Baby
In my first parish, Park Church, in Grand Rapids, Michigan (1968–1971), talk about abortion galvanized a number of my colleagues. The Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision lay a few years off. The Senior Minister, Rev. McKenney, placed abortion advocacy petitions to Congress at the church door, appealing for signatures. My clergy peers were helping women find physicians who would perform abortions. I had no use for this activity.
When we came to Pullman, Washington, in 1971, I soon helped found a Pregnancy Counseling Center in Moscow, Idaho, the adjacent city. There I worked with Catholics and Protestants of similar views to enable girls and women to find a supportive atmosphere in which to find alternatives to abortion.
On December 10, 1972, I brought this issue to the pulpit in an oblique way under the title, “Mary Had a Baby.” I wrote a dramatic dialogue for Mary and Joseph as they considered together the “problem pregnancy.”
Taking extensive poetic license from the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, I presented the couple as caught in a struggle about what course to take.
The dialogue which Brenda Robinson, as Mary, and I, as Joseph, held that morning before the congregation took place as follows:
Once coming to terms with Mary’s pregnancy, they spoke of the threatening political circumstance around them—their poverty–laden situation and their forlorn hopes for Messiah. Mary exclaimed, “These circumstances grip me like a vise.” Joseph even tells Mary he knows of a man who can end the pregnancy.
There is a pause, as if time has passed. Then the couple begin to speak to each other of the arrival of resources beyond themselves, “life affirmers” from the ancient text and saints around them. Mary tells Joseph she has “pondered things in her heart.” Then she exclaims, “Dare I say it, Joseph. I feel as a co–creator of the world. Without me part of the future dies . . . Joseph, I feel that God is with me . . . I will have this baby!”
The dialogue builds in affirmation. Joseph exclaims, “Mary, we have traveled thousands of miles in this room. We can travel the rest of the way to new birth.” And Mary replies, “Joseph, I feel the ecstasy of hope . . . I am literally inhabited by hope! My soul magnifies the Lord . . . ”
So as Mary utters the words of the Magnificat, Joseph concludes it, words they both know from the tradition when Hannah bore Samuel, her first–born son.
In his excellent volume, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self Worship, Paul C. Vitz criticizes “selfism” psychologies that have attacked the family structure. He then offers a word of advice which I approve:
May we not see that a psychologist advising abortion is acting in hostility against the deep structure of beliefs and meaning celebrated in the Christmas story? Recall that the young Mary was pregnant under circumstances that today routinely terminate in abortion. In the important theological context of Christmas, the killing of an unborn child is a symbolic killing of the Christ Child.8
Mr. Vitz sees the development of counseling approaches under the rubric, “family therapy,” as a hopeful sign.
For a long time now I have noted that promoters of liberal thought in religion and politics speak out on behalf of the most vulnerable in society. They even say a society should be judged on how it treats its weakest members. How can they leave the fetus out of this equation? An anomaly!
Of course, I know the reply: “Well, the unborn is not yet a person.” Really? How is it we allow nine allegedly wise persons to decide the arrival of personhood in the womb? What is there in our holy history that gives women, or men for that matter, “the right to choose”? We’ve come a long way, baby. A long way away from reverence for life.
Funding Our Lives by Chance
During my last year of ministry in Pullman, Washington, and my first year in Tacoma, Washington (1981–1983), I filled the role of President of the Washington Association of Churches (WAC). I served as Vice President previously (1979–1980). This body, the successor to the Washington Council of Churches, brought Catholics and Protestants together around many themes. Rev. Loren Arnett served for many years as its effective Executive Minister.
The ministries of the WAC were as long as your arm. It attended to refugees, food needs, employment, etc. Annually a legislative conference alerted churches to relevant issues on tap in the state legislature. The WAC supervised the Washington Wheat Campaign in which agriculture in the state contributed donated wheat to be shipped from Portland or Seattle to needy sites abroad. For example, in January 1984, 3,936 bags (200,000 lb.) of wheat traveled through Peru to Bolivia to be distributed by the indigenous churches to the most in need.
As I say, the vast amount of ministry would require many pages to disclose. Perhaps a report from Loren Arnett, in July of 1987, will serve to speak of the quantity
