wfn.org | Three Christians hailed for combining deep spirituality and action

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Note #6416 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

for justice
8-March-2001
01088

Three Christians hailed for combining deep spirituality and action for
justice

Winn profiles a lone abolitionist, a "noisy monk," a woman of substance

by John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE -- Albert C. Winn devoted his Greenhoe Lecture series to admiring
profiles of three extraordinary Christian writers who in his mind exemplify
the ideal balance between "deep spirituality" on the one hand and "radical
social concern" on the other:

	John Woolman, an obscure 18th-century Quaker minister who raised his lonely
voice against slavery in the American colonies; Thomas Merton, a
best-selling Trappist hermit who over three decades issued "a flood of
articles and essays dealing with the great social issues of the time"; and
Elizabeth O’Connor, a latecomer to Christianity who served and chronicled a
mold-breaking ecumenical church in Washington, D.C., and founded a program
that provides low-cost, decent housing to poor people.

	Winn, 79, was a featured lecturer during the Festival of Theology and
Reunion 2001, a three-day event at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological
Seminary (LPTS) that commenced on Monday, March 5. He is a former LPTS
president (1966-1973) and professor of systematic theology ('60-'73), an
emeritus for whom a campus building is named.

	The annual Greenhoe Lectures are named for Dr. Theodore M. Greenhoe, an
LPTS graduate who served as pastor of Presbyterian churches in Michigan and
Indiana.

	In introducing Woolman, Winn said, "I found it possible to graduate from a
first-rate college and a first-rate seminary without ever hearing that
name."

	Woolman, born in 1720, was an itinerant preacher who devoted much of his
ministerial career to 41 journeys through the colonies, from the Carolinas
to Massachusetts, during which he dropped in on Society of Friends meetings
and called for the eradication of slavery, which was widely practiced among
the Quakers of his day.

	One of the ways Woolman made his living was by writing wills and bills of
sale. A task of that sort occasioned what Winn called Woolman's "first test
of conscience":

	"My employer, having a Negro woman, sold her, and desired me to write a
bill of sale. ... The thing was sudden; and though I felt uneasy at the
thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow-creatures,
yet I remembered ... that it was my master who directed me to do it, and
that it was an elderly man, a member of our Society, who bought her; so
through weakness I gave way, and wrote it; but at the executing of it I was
so afflicted in my mind, that I said before my master and the Friend that I
believed slave-keeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian
religion."

	Whereupon Woolman decided that he would no longer write bills of sale
regarding slaves -- and would never again violate his principles "through
weakness."

	Living in slave-owners' homes during his journeys also "roused his
conscience":

	When I ate, drank, and lodged free-cost with people who lived in ease on
the hard labor of their slaves, I felt uneasy. ... I saw in these southern
provinces so many vices and corruptions increased by this trade and this way
of life, that it appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land;
and ... the consequences will be grievous to posterity.

	"A remarkable prophecy, made in 1746, over a hundred years before the Civil
War!" Winn said. "Later that year he wrote a manuscript concerning the
keeping of slaves. For some reason he did not publish it until 1753. I
surmise that it was hard for him to face the opposition that he knew it
would arouse. Woolman prized friendships and liked to be liked. ... His
journal is punctuated with cries and prayers of deep distress."

	On later journeys, Winn said, Woolman always "carried with him a number of
small coins and insisted on leaving them on payment to the slaves, which of
course violated the canons of hospitality and was taken as an insult by
those who entertained him. As a result he had to engage in long and
difficult explanations everywhere he went."

	Woolman also shared in the Quakers' opposition to war. When a tax was
imposed to pay for the French and Indian war, he refused to pay it, writing:
"To refuse the active payment of a tax which our Society generally paid was
exceedingly disagreeable; yet to do a thing contrary to my conscience
appeared yet more dreadful." He was an early draft counselor, arranging for
some young men of conscience to be excused from military service. He gave up
retailing, his most lucrative source of income, because he objected to
selling alcohol and other "superfluities" to the poor. Longing for a life
"more free of outward cumbers," he opposed "wearing too costly apparel,"
shunned overly ornamental furniture, and refused to drink from silver
vessels or wear dyed clothes. On a voyage to England, he would not take a
cabin, where he had spied "superfluities of workmanship," but traveled in
steerage instead. "Every degree of luxury," he wrote, "hath some connection
with evil."

	Woolman died of smallpox in England in 1772, during the last of his
journeys. Within 20 years of his death, all Quakers in the colonies had
emancipated their slaves. By the turn of the century, Britain no longer had
merchant ships engaged in the slave trade.

	Two things were particularly important in Woolman's spiritual quest, Winn
said: Bible reading and prayer, both of which he took up very early in life.
"Before I was seven years old," Woolman wrote, "I began to be acquainted
with the operations of Divine love." In prayer, he often "retired" or
"withdrew" into "private places," where he "besought the Lord to take me
wholly under his direction, and show me the way in which I ought to walk,"
and practiced the discipline of silence so that he could listen for "the
voice of the true Shepherd."

	Winn said a vision Woolman had "illustrates better than anything else he
ever wrote, the combination of deep spirituality and social passion that
marked his life":
	
	"In a time of sickness ... I was brought so near the gates of death that I
forgot my name. Being then desirous to know who I was, I saw a mass of
matter of a dully gloomy color between the south and the east, and was
informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be
and live; and that I was mixed with them, and that henceforth I might not
consider myself as a distinct or separate being."

	Winn pointed out that Woolman's journal, published after his death in 1774,
"has never been out of print,"” adding modestly, "I report this as the
author of six books -- all of which are out of print."

	Winn called Woolman "a simple man, almost a transparent man"; by contrast,
he said, Merton was "a complex man, a riddle, whose life was marked by
bewildering twists and turns."

	He noted that Merton's life divides neatly into two 27-year periods: a
dissolute youth and a maturity marked by "a deep, sincere desire to devote
himself entirely to contemplative prayer" -- the first period ending and the
second beginning with the publication of his best-selling autobiography, The
Seven Storey Mountain.

	Merton hoped "to become a quiet, contemplative monk, to find peace," Winn
said, "but ... he had a writer on his back, and his superiors were in league
with that monster. When they found out he could write, they assigned him for
his work, instead of labor in the fields, hours at the typewriter."

	Merton's internal journey, Winn said, was a quest to understand and
practice contemplative prayer, which he once defined as "a deep and
simplified spiritual activity in which the mind and will rest in a unified
and simple concentration upon God, turned to Him, intent upon Him and
absorbed in His own light."

	While Merton "was never sure that he had experienced the mystical union,"
Winn said, "others who observed him in his final days felt that he had. Some
of the Buddhists who met him felt he was an incarnation of the Buddha."

	Meanwhile, Winn said, Merton was evincing "a social passion one would not
expect of a cloistered monk." While Merton's attitude toward creation when
he entered the monastery was dismissive — in Winn's telling, he considered
the world "corrupt," "hated it" and "was glad to escape it" — his attitude
changed during a 1957 visit to Louisville, when he was "suddenly overwhelmed
with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine, and
I theirs. ... It was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost
laughed out loud."

	"It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a
race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible
mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of
the human race! ... If only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be
explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking
around shining like the sun."

	This newfound investment in the humanity led Merton to take an interest in
social issues, notably including nuclear warfare, race relations, the Cold
War and the Vietnam War. Many of his opinions on such issues were
controversial and brought him into conflict with his superiors, who censored
his work, held up publication for months or years and ultimately silenced
him altogether. (Eventually times changed and Merton resumed his public
witness.)

	Merton devoted a lot of thought to the balance between spirituality and
social passion. "Far from being essentially opposed to each other," he
wrote, "interior contemplation and external activity are two aspects of the
same love of God."

	Winn concluded that Merton "remains a puzzling, fascinating, inspiring
example of the combination we are stressing in these lectures."

	Elizabeth O'Connor was raised outside any religious tradition by parents
who were embittered ex-Catholics. Her spiritual life began in her 30s, when
she was dragged to church by a friend and heard a sermon on the Sermon on
the Mount by a young Baptist minister, the Rev. Gordon Cosby, in the church
Cosby co-founded in 1947 in Washington, D.C., the Church of the Savior.

	This non-denominational church of "gifted" lay people was evangelistic and
deeply committed to social justice. It spun off more than a handful of 
like-minded churches in the Washington area and around the country. Small
"mission groups" of 10 or 12 members of the Church of the Savior created
programs for poor children and families, orphans and foster children,
alcoholics and drug addicts, troubled children, the homeless, the
unemployed, residents of public housing. Dozens of these programs are still
in operation today.

	O'Connor was particularly devoted to The Potter's House, a coffeehouse and
bookstore whose purpose was to draw "unchurched" people into conversation
about the Gospel and eventually to convert them to Christianity.

	Later she founded Sarah's Circle, which she had envisioned as an apartment
house where single, aging women (like herself) could live in dignity and
safety. For practical reasons it became a community for both genders and
more than one age group. O'Connor and her supporters raised $1 million for
the program, and when Sarah's Circle opened, they moved in. O'Connor died
there in 1998.

	"Like every story of creation the story of Sarah's Circle is one of agony
and ecstasy, of pain and hope. ... Some days I have wanted to close the door
on Sarah's Circle and walk away forever. What does it matter how good and
beautiful are the visions that stir our imaginations when they take us into
waters that appear too stormy to our frightened selves. ... The
intergenerational community we found in our circle included not only those
frail and vulnerable old, but drug dealers, alcoholics, battered wives and
abused children."

	O'Connor maintained what were essentially three full-time jobs. She was a
devoted church worker, a group therapist who commuted to New York for
sessions, and a writer. The fuel she burned was equal parts Bible study and
prayer.

	"From the very first the Church of the Savior had insisted that its social
passion should always be matched by a spiritual quest. ... There was a great
temptation, as they faced the insistent, often emergency needs of the poor,
to omit Bible study and prayer and devote that time to action. If they never
did, I have the feeling that it was due to Elizabeth O'Connor."

	In prayer, she turned more and more in Merton's direction, reading the
works of the great contemplatives and mystics and developing a keen interest
in contemplation; but late in life, when she was crippled by arthritis, she
"went back to simple petitionary prayer.

	"In Scripture she experimented with memorization, committing the whole
Letter to the Ephesians to memory," Winn said. "She tried staying with one
book for a whole year. Exodus became a favorite with her; again and again
she returned to the story of Moses, every time with fresh insights. But her
books are studded with quotations and allusions to all parts of Scripture.
She was saturated with it."

	Winn said O'Connor recommended "the practice of meditation," explaining:
"This is the practice of reading the bible, not to do something to it -- to
outline it, to find grist for a sermon you are preaching or a class you are
teaching, to find support for your views in an argument -- but to let it do
something to you, to listen to it as God's word."

	O'Connor noted that when the Potter's House "prayer hour" from 5 p.m. to 6
went well, the atmosphere was warm and wonderful for the rest of the night;
but when it didn't go well the atmosphere was strained and difficult.

	"When the work of prayer has been done, we can see and hear in each other
what otherwise comes to us distorted, or is entirely blotted out. We do not
have to find a place for ourselves in the scheme of things. Prayer frees us
to be for the other person. It is preparation for the event of community."

	O’Connor had a conscience that Woolman would have recognized: For many
years, she struggled with the question "whether as a single person she
should prudently provide for her old age, or give away most of her savings
and salary, live in poverty herself, and trust God." According to Winn, the
question became "a recurring agony" for O’Connor.

	"I have tried to introduce to you three of my close friends, mentors,
models," Winn concluded. "... All of them combined deep spirituality and
social passion in a marvelous way. By the singular beauty of their lives,
each lures you and me to attempt the same combination. May God strengthen us
in that resolve."

	Asked whether he has managed that combination in his own life, Winn laughed
and replied: "Well, I try. But I'm no model."

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