On Pilgrimage: Editorial Reflection and Plea to Presbyterians

It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day — Jan. 20, 2003 — what would have been the 74th birthday of the great civil rights leader of the 20th century — and almost 35 years after his assassination. I wanted to be in Selma, Ala.

The grainy black-and-white TV footage of marchers being beaten at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate general, remain indelibly imbedded in the mind; marchers crossing the bridge; walking from Selma to Montgomery to demand the right to vote and the right for all humans to be treated decently and honorably. There’s also the terrible memory of four civil rights workers slain in the area in 1965, who are memorialized in a park at the foot of the bridge.

An American Dilemma, as Gunnar Myrdal described it years ago, was the existence of slavery, followed by the oppressive yoke of segregation, in a nation committed to religious ideals and the promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all. This dilemma had to be resolved for the promise of America to be fulfilled — and for the promises of God to be fulfilled.

Gradually the heavy burden of the past has been lifted, but only partially. The sin was named, the power of evil was eroded in the providence of God — slowly, but steadily, by the work of countless women, men, young people and even children, some of whom gave their lives to the struggle.

I vividly remember the third decade of my life, the critical formative years of young adulthood — the ’60s into the ’70s — when all seemed to be coming apart with the great struggle for the liberation of African-Americans (and all others shut out from the American dream). Also remembered are Vietnam and Watergate which immersed the nation in self-doubt, from which we have yet fully to emerge.

Selma was a pivotal moment in the struggle; it led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Blood was shed for simple justice. The nation had to act. People — black and white — came to Selma from East and West and North and South. Among them were many Presbyterians, including my former seminary teachers — Ernest Trice Thompson, who was founder of the modern-day Presbyterian Outlook, and Rachel Henderlite, legendary Southern Presbyterian educator. I wanted to go where these friends and mentors had been, to catch a glimpse of what they might have seen.

What happened at Selma nearly 40 years ago recalls the great pilgrimage of God’s people Israel, fleeing from Egyptian bondage and wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Before his death Moses took them as far as the mountains overlooking the promised land.

Then Joshua led them across the Jordan River, into the land of promise. They erected stones as a memorial to this remarkable passage over water, the second since leaving Egypt. By the power of God they conquered the land, piece by piece.

Selma then and now: The only image I had of Selma was formed by newsreel footage from long ago. Selma today appears substantially different from the Selma I remember from the news footage.

Jan. 20, 2003, the day of the visit, was a beautiful day: clear, cold, bright blue cloudless sky.

The city was clean; it was well-ordered. There are now some elected black leaders in the city and county, but the first African-American mayor was elected only two years ago, in a city that is majority African-American. Separation between the races continues in housing. While there are some integrated neighborhoods, most are not. The city is smaller today than it was then. Progress? Certainly progress has been made in the last four decades, but much remains to be done, as is the case throughout the country.

The whole area is suffering — terribly. Dallas and surrounding counties are among the poorest in the nation, with some of the highest infant, child and teen mortality rates in the nation and some of the shortest life expectancies in the world. Some of the conditions for families living in rural areas are startlingly poor, making one wonder if this area is indeed part of the richest country in the world.

Third World in the U.S.? Yes, after all these years, the richest, most powerful nation ever, still without the courage to face up to the massive reality of radical inequality — economic and otherwise. And we’re talking about trillion-dollar tax cuts at the same time we’re willing to spend an estimated $200+ billion to rebuild Iraq into a democracy after what planners say will be a brief war costing several tens of billions of dollars.

What would Dr. King say in 2003? Would he weep over Selma? Would he weep over the United States? Do we weep over impoverished Black Belt Alabama and Mississippi and countless other places, urban, rural and, now, even suburban, where children go hungry and hopes are as distant as they ever were?

A Wonderful Discovery

A wonderful discovery made on the trip to Selma in January 2003: the Roman Catholic Edmundite missons, begun more than 65 years ago in response to a papal appeal to respond to the desperate needs of poor Southern blacks. Several dozen fathers and brothers of the Edmundite order (headquartered in Vermont and named for the medieval English archbishop whose dedication to the poor was legendary), have labored through the decades to bring life and hope to the least of God’s children — black and white. The Edmundites are augmented by the Sisters of St. Joseph (headquartered in New York state) and sisters of other orders, who operate, with the brothers and fathers, community centers and other programs in several Black Belt communities in addition to Selma (and New Orleans). They provide basic services to those who need them, of whatever age or economic status, of whatever race. They are sustaining life at the most basic level. (To find out about the Edmundites, including how to help, write: Father Roger La Charité, Edmundite Missions, 1428 Broad St., Selma, AL 36701; 334/872-2359; or check out their Web site: www.edmunditemissions.org.)

The Edmundites and the sisters live simply and humbly after the manner of our Lord who walked the dusty streets of Palestine 2,000 years ago. They work largely unnoticed. Many locals do not know who or what they are and do — providing adult day care, education, health care, food, clothing, emergency assistance, shelter — and, most important of all, love! — which somehow keep hopeless people going. They are the face of Jesus to God’s people who have been totally marginalized by poverty, and forgotten.

We Protestants gave up the so-called Catholic “vocations” at the time of the Reformation because of our theological recovery of the idea that every Christian has a vocation and that church vocations are not somehow superior to all the others. Well and good. But something was lost.

For a long time Protestants worked out the equivalent of “orders” through missionary programs, international and national, which put women and men in service to the Lord and the church, in effect, for a lifetime. (The cadre of church educators, mostly unmarried women serving without much security or respect, must be included.) The last of these commissioned Protestant servants are now dying. Read their obituaries in The Outlook’s “About People” — fewer all the time — having served 30 or 40 years, sometimes more, in another land and, less frequently, among the poor and dispossessed in our own land.

Who will replace them? For the Roman Catholics, who will replace the heroic legions of sisters, brothers and fathers who have committed their life to the Lord in service?

The idea of a lifelong “vocation” in the Lord’s service — sacred as well as secular — is no longer operative in the postmodern, acquisitive, me-centered society. It’s difficult to get promising young people to consider even the conventional ministry — and far more difficult to elicit a commitment to a lifetime call involving great self-sacrifice and self-denial in Third World conditions here or elsewhere.

Take up your cross and follow me . . . . The one who would lose life will find it, says the Lord.

How would Dr. King feel about the progress thus far? Probably fairly dispirited, though certainly thankful for the important accomplishments of the ongoing movement for civil rights across several decades now.

In our case our parochial concerns and turf battles often blunt our mission. Some of us are engaging in the figurative killing of our enemies within the church. Some of us are investing vast amounts of time, money and interest in self-righteous, often self-serving fools’ errands of various kinds — all the while ignoring the plain words of the Lord in Matthew 25: “As you have done it to the least of these. . . .”

Will we as God’s people recover our vision of God’s will and our mission as revealed supremely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? in Scripture? in the witness of the visible church catholic which has preceded us in the intervening 2,000 years?

Will we once again see it as our call to take the gospel to the ends of the Earth? Will we develop a renewed commitment as the people of God to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, educate the children (and adults), give work to the jobless, and health care to the halt, the lame and the wounded — and to seek equality and justice for all God’s children?

Hard to say. One thing is certain. Only the Spirit of the Living God can call forth such vision, commitment and outpouring of lives and fortunes necessary to advance God’s sovereign, loving purposes in the world. We cannot and will not do that on our own. Christian history testifies amply to that large fact!

Is this editor the only one who may be losing interest in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as an organized entity? Who is weary of small numbers of zealots of various persuasions, now armed and entrenched with money, publications, Web sites — locked in mortal conflict?

That’s my prayer for the church. May God have mercy on us all.