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The Rev. Dr. Jeremy J. Brigham
August 5 , 2007Public Religion in the Atomic Age: Revisiting Lincoln's "Mysterious Lord"
The unintentional collapse of the interstate bridge in Minneapolis last Wednesday during rush hour was a shocking reminder of our human vulnerability to the world we have created around us, as well as a remarkable example of the ability of the human community to pull together in caring and compassion in the face of a disaster.
At first, everyone was in shock. Many survivors and witnesses have spoken of the eery silence for several minutes after the collapse. Then calls for help and sirens began to sound. The news the first night showed the scene from various angles and struggled with the multiple meanings embedded in the scenes. Why did this happen? What went wrong? How many people are dead and injured? Where are they? Where did they go? How did the children get out of the bus? Are they ok?
By the second day more reflection had set in. God had entered the dialogue about the event. Those whose lives were spared despite falling two or three or more stories and whose cars were crumpled or gouged by other cars were amazed to be alive. The paraplegic who could not get out of his car because his wheelchair was stuck was fortunate, because the wheelchair would have rolled into the water. Now he has survived two threats to his life - as he was paraplegic because of a gunshot wound years before. He felt there was a reason he survived - to remind people to appreciate and enjoy every day of life, because it might be your last.
The rush of people to the scene was impressive - the whole fire fighting apparatus of the Twin Cities went to the rescue. First Responders responded first. Hospitals geared up to take in and treat the injured. The mayor and the governor were at the scene, ready to help and to talk to the media, and consider what needed to be done in the future. Hospitals put out the call for blood donors. The Red Cross was at the ready.
Those who were missing a loved one hoped for the best, but clearly feared the worst. Later we saw that the mother who had adopted and raised two children from South America was, alas, among the dead. The emotion of the family as seen on CNN, before they knew for sure of her death, was quite moving. One could enter into their feelings.
Now, shift to another time and another place, and another disaster.
Tomorrow is Hiroshima Day, the 62 nd anniversary of the use of the first nuclear bomb. What we have witnessed this week, for all its shock and horror, is minor compared to the devastation wreaked intentionally on the population of Hiroshima sixty-two years ago, and then on Nagasaki three days later. While our focus this week is on bridge safety, with inspections going on all over the country and with Congress doling out money to rebuild I-35 in Minneapolis, the nuclear threat remains with us, shaping political decisions and considerations.
I maintain that the nuclear threat has spiritual as well as political implications. With the awareness that the use of nuclear weapons could instantaneously eliminate thousands, if not millions, and ruin great swaths of environment, some may fatalistically tend to live for the moment, and not care about the future. Others look down the road to see how we can reduce the risk of such annihilation.
In 1945 life expectancy in the USA was about 64 for men, and 68 for women. By 1998 it was 74 for men, 80 for women. Given the greater life expectancy in our society we should prepare for long lives, not instantaneous annihilation.
But, we live in this kind of tension between opposite possibilities, and struggle to resolve its meaning and implications.
In this contemporary context, what do we make of Paul's Letter to the Colossians two thousand years ago. At first, his message sounds like the basis of the fundamentalists - do away with fornication, indecency, lust, foul cravings, ruthless greed. But when you think about it, he means rape, exposure, desire for what belongs to others, murderous feelings, getting more than you deserve. He won't find much argument there. He says - lay aside anger, passion, malice, cursing, filthy talk - in other words, calm down, think straight, be respectful, give others room to respond. I think he means - don't forget your head when your heart is speaking to you.
Then he calls people to put on these garments: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Be forbearing and forgiving. Be filled with gratitude. Be thankful. We know these are the best qualities, though at times we fall short, or are too short-sighted to exercise them.
These are personal qualities, qualities we can relate to, that we can strive for.
But now - for the core of my message today - what about public religion, in contrast to personal or private religion?
Should our government promote a religion of personal morality through its taxing and spending structures? Does this mean giving money to institutions that proclaim this personal morality as its basis?
What did the founding fathers and succeeding leaders have to say about this? How did they approach the issue of religion in public affairs?
This question is important, when we consider the problem of bridges and nuclear weapons, as well as hurricanes and levees and air controllers and civil wars, subsidies to farmers and support of children's health, and other matters of public concern and welfare.
Over the 150 years of settlement of the American colonies, religious righteousness and persecution was common both in Massachusetts and in Virginia. Toleration was stronger in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Interestingly, the founding fathers tended to be from Virginia and Massachusetts - Washington, Jefferson, Madison from Virginia, the Adams - John and John Quincy - from Massachusetts, states with a history of persecution. They saw the problems of righteousness, and sought to establish a government that recognized a God, but favored no denomination. They favored a God who was a Creator, a moral lawgiver, and attentive to the affairs of state, but not a Christian God, and not a denominational God. They did not want to get involved in the relation of Jesus to God, or in preferences for a particular brand of religious interpretation. Leave that to the theologians.
The presence in the country of so many different Christian denominations - Congregationalists, Baptists, Unitarians, Universalists, Anglicans, Quakers, Lutherans, Methodists, Catholics, and of course Presbyterians, many of whom had abused each other - supported the notion of not favoring any established church. The presence of Jewish communities in New York, Newport, Rhode Island, Charleston, South Carolina and other places underscored the importance of not favoring any Christian phraseology. Even the presence of Muslims in the Mediterranean, with whom Jefferson wanted to keep up good relations as he opposed piracy, was a factor in the argument against making this a Christian nation. Muslims and Jews could both support a law-giving Creator God who cared about His Creation.
The founding fathers favored religious activity, however, as a matter of personal morality. Thus they accepted church going enthusiastically without supporting any specific church. They also recognized that rationalists who did not attend church could have a moral and ethical basis for their lives.
The First Amendment to the Constitution sealed the matter of the relation of church and state. It reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof. There had been a Senate version that spoke of making no law establishing articles of faith or modes of worship, but that was turned down for the broader phrase, establishment of religion. This broader phrase precluded the government from supporting specific churches.
This approach to religion - an awareness of God acting in public life, permitting religious activity, but not supporting any particular religious organization, continued on through the life of the country, though it faced challenges many times.
The greatest test of our union and of religion came in regard to slavery. Both those who opposed and those who supported slavery used religion to defend their arguments, taking different passages from the Bible to make their cases. In fact, Paul's Letter to the Colossians, from which we heard this morning, goes on to argue "Slaves, give entire obedience to your earthly masters.out of reverence for our Lord." On the other hand, Paul urged the Masters to "be just and fair to your slaves." Here the context is important, but still does not justify slavery. After all, Paul had referred just a few sentences before to all being "members of a single body" and that there is no difference between "slave and freeman." He was referring to cosmic or theological considerations, not calling for a social transformation. But in the American context, slavery was quite different from the Biblical context, and abuse and cruelty in America was clearly endemic and rampant. Abolitionists used the phrase from Exodus 21:16 " Whoever kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or is in possession of him, shall be put to death."
Lincoln had no rosy view of God, but accepted God as a judging God, who would hold people to account. He came to see slavery as simply wrong, using reason and experience as well as Biblical injunctions. He said, "If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong (quoted in Meachem, 123)." He understood the founding fathers to be saying, "nothing stamped with the Divine image was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded and imbruted by its fellows (quoted in Meachem, 122).
Lincoln understood that humans cannot always arrange things as they would like. He understood that "the religious would see this inability. as the workings of the mysterious mind of God, (while) the secular would see (it) as the vagaries of fate or chance. Both would recognize that we are "subject to forces beyond our control (Meachem, 119).
So we come back to the fallen bridge, and the fear of other bridges falling, and to the anniversary of Hiroshima. These are human creations - bridges and bombs. We seek with one to span natural barriers - rivers - and increase our control of space and time. With the other we sought to bring a terrible war to an end, but now the world has many countries with nuclear weapons, and more seeking to develop them. At least one of the presidential candidates has pointed out that disabling existing weapons should be a major goal of the next administration, in order to reduce the dangers.
While it is true that we cannot arrange things as we would like, we know more about how to reduce risks of all kinds. To reduce risks is costly, but not to do this when we have the knowledge is irresponsible. Lincoln tackled the division of the country that arose from the human institution of slavery. We have other problems we need to tackle, over which there may be great disagreements. We need both the public religion that recognizes a God that is attentive and cares what we do, and the personal religion that calls us to our better natures, as Paul detailed in his Letter to the Colossians so long ago. But we also need a government that keeps its hand out of the establishment of particular religious faiths, and allows us the freedom to either practice or not practice, according to our individual consciences. Only in this way can we carry out the democracy won with such great difficulty, and provide a model to others across the world.
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