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I begin
with a reading about another famous African American. It’s from a
book by Scott Ehrlich. He writes: “On the morning of June 12,
1956, a panel of grim-faced government officials in Washington, DC,
assembled to review information about a hearing that was about to
begin. The House Un-American Activities Committee had been
established by Congress in 1939 to look into the affairs of American
citizens who were suspected by the government of acting against the
interests of their country.
“On this spring day, the House Un-American Activities
Committee panel was going to be questioning Paul Robeson, the
renowned singer and actor. During his long career on the stages of
Europe and the United States, the 58-year-old
Robeson had become one of the world’s best-known and most beloved
black Americans—especially abroad. Yet he had not been content to
be only an entertainer. For more than 20 years, he had been using
his unforgettable bass voice to speak out about the needs and
aspirations of the poor and oppressed people in the United States
and around the world.
Robeson’s ardent support for human rights causes had
gained him many enemies. His statements that racism was still
rampant within the United States were viewed by some Americans as
being unpatriotic. His concerts in support of international peace,
workers’ rights, and racial tolerance had been picketed by his
opponents, and violence had broken out at some of the events. In
1950, the State Department had revoked his passport…He had been
blacklisted in the entertainment industry…By the time of his meeting
with the House Un-American Activities Committee, Robeson’s
spectacular voice had been virtually silenced because he was
believed to be dangerous.”
Like others who were called before the Committee,
Robeson invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked if he was a member of
the Communist Party and again when asked to name others who were
members of the Communist Party. But Robeson went further. He
challenged the Committee at every step. At one point he said “You
want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and
fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers.”
Asked why he did not stay in Russia, he replied, “Because my father
was a slave, and my people died to build this country and I am going
to stay here and have a part of it just like you. And no
fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?” At
the end of the hearing he said to the Committee, “You are the
non-patriots, and you are the un-Americans and you ought to be
ashamed of yourselves.”
During the days of the House Un-American Activities
Committee, playwright Arthur Miller asked himself the question
“What’s going on here?” In response he wrote a play called The
Crucible. It was about the Salem witch trials. Innocent women
were called before the authorities and accused of being witches who
intended to undermine good Christian society. Then they were asked
to name others who were witches. The play was a stunning analogy to
the hearings of the infamous Committee in Washington. Of course the
accused witches had no Fifth Amendment to invoke so they were put to
death, and that is exactly where unrestrained witch-hunting
eventually leads. That’s frightening.
Today it is not communism but rather terrorism which
seems to threaten our national security and so tempts our government
to engage in the age-old practice of witch-hunting. And once again
it is done in the name of religion, morality and democracy. It
isn’t just ironic. It’s crazy-making. What frightens me is the
huge unspoken lie that undergirds it all and is uncritically
believed by almost everyone. It goes something like this.|
(turn around)
I did not turn around. You say you saw me turn around? You’re
wrong. I didn’t. If I repeat this enough and I don’t waiver you
will actually begin to doubt what you saw with your own eyes. Take
the following statements: Because I’m against gay marriage, I’m
religious. Because I oppose affirmative action, I’m moral. Because
I support my government in spying on its citizens and in condoning
torture, I’m democratic. This is not religion nor morality nor
democracy. It is blatant injustice masquerading as religion,
morality and democracy.
But if I keep on defining religion and morality this way
and no one challenges that definition, it begins to be accepted as
true. People who see the injustice begin to reject religion and
morality. Will they in time reject democracy as well?
We need to ask what is causing such a huge gap between
what is clearly just and humane and what is labeled religious and
moral and democratic. History tells of even wider chasms—crusades,
inquisitions, persecutions and holocausts, all in the name of
religion and morality. We have good reason to be concerned and
frightened.
I think it’s important for us to articulate an
alternative definition of religion and morality. It is partly our
own confusion that allows extreme fundamentalist attitudes to be
equated with religion. It is a wider societal confusion that causes
people to look for security in TV evangelists or politicians who
encourage self-righteous bigotry.
I think we can reclaim today a basic tenet of our own
religious past and that is universalism. It started out in response
to very similar kinds of self-righteousness, doctrines of the saved
and the unsaved. Universalism meant belief in a god who loved
everyone, not just a chosen few. Or as Shakespeare noted, the rain
falls on the just and the unjust, on fundamentalists as well as
liberals. Who is right? All of us. Who is wrong? All of us.
Today if we are humanists we may redefine universalism as the
oneness of humanity, all of us earthlings on this space-ship
together. But what makes it possible for us to act on that belief?
How do we avoid the bigoted we-they mentality when we are faced with
it in others?
One of the developmental tasks of adult life is joining
the human race. At some point we come face to face with our own
complicity in evil. There is no way to go through life without
hurting someone. When I was 29 I felt strongly that my own growth
and fulfillment would be best served by leaving my marriage. It was
an agonizing decision because I knew that whether I left or stayed
the people around me would suffer and I would suffer.
In the years before I made that decision I was very self-righteous.
It was the process of looking inward, of acknowledging my own anger
and admitting my own dreams that made me aware of the dreams and
frustrations of other people. Encountering my own demons, I began
to feel compassion for others as they struggled with theirs, and
even for those who refused to take on that encounter. Deciding to
leave the marriage, to live with the guilt and the disapproval, I
learned that the line between evil and good runs right through each
of us. I do think the percentages vary—some of us are more virtuous
than others!
To take such an inner journey means that we look to no
authority but that of our own experience. Ours is in man y ways a
“mystic” type religion in the sense that theologian Ernst Troelstch
used the term. Each person is forced back upon her own personal
experience as the final authority for what is loving or just. The
divine is usually experienced as within oneself and the natural
world. Enlightenment is usually felt as being in harmony with the
processes of nature. Troelstch assumed that such religion was too
individual and personal, too indifferent to society, to have any
impact upon the world or to attract large numbers of people. He
concluded, however, that “mystic” type religion was the only kind
possible for modern people in a pluralistic society.
What is missing from Troelstch’s description of “mystic”
religion is the way in which harmony within oneself and in relation
to the natural world often puts one in direct conflict with the
social order. Paul Robeson was true to himself and his view of
social justice so he was considered dangerous.
It is no accident that the arch mystic and nature lover,
Henry David Thoreau, wrote a tract on civil disobedience and went to
jail for refusing to pay his taxes because they would be used to
support a war. It is no accident that his essay influenced another
arch mystic in India, Ghandi, whose non-violent expression of his
convictions caused momentous political changes. He in turn
influenced Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps mystic today has come to mean being fully aware
of one’s life situation and taking responsibility for altering it if
it is not in line with the values one derives from that very
personal experience of harmony within the self. It is this
definition that I have in mind when I say that ours is a “mystic”
type religion.
It is my belief that the journey inward is the way to
forgiveness of oneself and compassion for others. It is a path to
authentic social action. On that journey we give up blaming others,
we discover our own longings, we meet within ourselves the power to
look with clear eyes at our life situation in this society and to
choose the path of our highest ideals.
That is the spiritual path, the mystic religion of our
time, the sense of self that brings compassion and power. It takes
courage. It is much easier to live out the conventional roles of
society without ever turning the spotlight on ourselves. It is more
comfortable to follow the rules laid out by the TV evangelist. But
if we drift along without embarking on that inner journey we will
never know who we really are, what resentments drive us, what great
dreams we squelch. And we will never know compassion. Failing to
know our own depths, we can never know the depths of others. We can
continue to be self-righteous. We can avoid seeing the gap between
real justice and a morality which is at best self-serving. We can
even come to equate religion with the most inhuman of causes.
Where is our religion of justice and compassion being
seen and heard? We have chosen the difficult path, the one that
makes us responsible for justice, and once we have seen with new
eyes there is no turning back.
******
Opening
quote excerpted from Ehrlich, Scott, Paul Robeson, Chelsea
House Publishers, New York, 1988, pp. 11-19. |
