“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” This is the haunting refrain in the musical “Hamilton.” The question, the entire musical, shifted the light on how we come to understand our story as a country. It would be hard to understand it now without it. Maybe we are coming out of the era where “Hamilton” lyrics pepper conversations, lift the chins of high schoolers during a sermon or offer an edgy truth dressed in a ruffled blouse. But I am not ready to set it down, especially these questions echoing through the finale. In the ruffled pages of history, who has the power to shape the narrative, to tell our story, as individuals, as a people?
Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Maybe we are coming out of an era when publications arrived in the mailbox. Newsweek is gone. Newspapers are struggling. Print media in general is begging for subscribers. The internet covers everything in a cellophane of sound: feeds that do not nourish, stories that are only the glossy part of the story, Facebook “walls” that become true and lasting barriers between people. There are many stories that are hot but not fully baked. There is a real pressure for news to be immediate, certain and free of charge, a combination that calls into question all three. There is real pressure for publications to play a role, to pander to a tribe, to promise ahead of time how long an article will take to read. But, I am not ready to set down the need for a trusted voice even if it is not the first or the loudest voice, even if I have to pay for it. I trust it more because I do pay for it.
Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story? The Presbyterian Outlook has lived on narthex tables and in church people’s imaginations for 200 years. Sometimes it has functioned like that trusted usher helping us find a place to sit in complex church discussions and General Assemblies, even if we feel we showed up a bit late to something that seems important. This curious publication inking up the Presbyterian Church has had times of real bravery, as well as seasons of being drowsy, wrong or on the brink of shuttering. But it has told our story as Presbyterians, and at its best, the Outlook has called us into a better one: the story of
Jesus Christ.
Many of us have jagged stacks of these magazines in our office or in the church library. Sometimes they remind me of little Ebenezers, pillars our ancestors used to mark places where they were helped. In those pages, there are lives of transformed churches, and there are pastors, theologians and social artists who died shaping the church. There are prayers that truly helped. The Outlook’s ruffled pages are now online too. Its chorus is more diverse, though it has a way to go. But this independent church press, like a great musical, is a brave platform to sing hope into the world.
