Why did Theodore Parker die? He died prematurely worn out through this enormous activity, -- a warning, as well as an example.... Had he been a mere student, this had been less destructive. But to take the standard of study of a German professor, and superadd to that the separate exhaustions of a Sunday preacher, a lyceum lecturer, a radical leader, and a practical philanthropist was simply to apply half a dozen distinct suicides to the abbreviation of a single life. And as his younger companions had long assured him, the tendency of his career was not only to kill himself, but them; for each assumed that he must at least attempt what Theodore Parker accomplished.... [Thomas Wentworth Higginson]
There were quite a few 19th century Unitarian ministers whose exhausting work was felt to have contributed to their premature demise, Joseph Stevens Buckminster and Henry Ware Jr. to name only two. But Parker's persona as a constitutionally robust child of farmers was a sharp contrast to the frail, "spiritual" ectomorphic body-types generally associated with piety in that era.
More to the point though is Higginson's observation that for many of the generation of clergy who followed Parker, the challenge of his accomplishments as Preacher and Abolitionist Reformer, Scholar, Lecturer, "Practical Philanthropist" (a reference to Parker's active involvement in hands-on public/pastoral ministry as well his more radical political involvement), and general all-around busybodyness set an impossibly high standard, while implicitly encouraging neglect of many of the more run-of-the-mill institutional duties of parish ministry.
Yet even recognizing this, we still admire him to this day as one of the "Three Prophets" of Religious Liberalism. We point to the 28th Congregational Society as some sort of great institutional success, the 19th century equivalent of the modern Megachurch, and...
Let me just say this. There's a lot more to "the Golden Age of Unitarianism" that Parker, Emerson, and Channing. But most of us seem hard pressed even to understand them in their context. And so we find ourselves trapped by a form of idolatry, flirting with "half a dozen distinct suicides" as we attempt to minister effectively in our time and place based on a false knowledge of our past, and a mistaken understanding of our real charge.
And yes, I still adore Theodore Parker....
4 comments:
Wow, EC, this could be the beginning of a very important discussion. There are several threads to follow. The one that seems most important to me now is the broken one between effective pastoral ministry and being the visible conscience of the community.
It may be that those are the two halves of ministry presented by Laurel Hallman and Peter Morales. I'm not making a case for the break or presenting it as bleak dichotomy, with consequences for the election -- it just seems like an interesting comparison this morning.
I was interested to read in your columns praise for a minister whose church I joined long ago. This minister's presence in the community was vivid, but the congregation was at each other's throats (when I finally left in disgust, I found several at the nearby Quaker meeting) -- any effort within the congregation was attended to by the minister's partner. Clearly that minister could not wear both hats. I always thought it was a failure in ministry, period, and was surprised to read your praise.
Twenty years after that first experience and a continent away from it, I attended a church whose minister was a thunderer, widely visible in the region and the denomination, especially on issues of racial justice. But that minister's household included people with severe handicaps whose existence the minister ignored -- both as a family member and as a political issue. This was visible to the congregation and weakened the ministry within the congregation; getting headlines couldn't wipe out that failure of ministry and parenthood. I could go on and so could you!
I think there was a tendency from Victorian times into the mid-20th century to believe that certain heroes died of broken hearts at the failure of their missions. There's Parker, of course, also William Jennings Bryan and (would you believe?) Senator McCarthy. Probably it really came down to what killed Prince Albert -- bad drains.
Thanks to EC and Diggitt for reminding us that we need to be gentle on ourselves.
Diggitt, when it comes to the UUA presidential race, I personally don't a stark choice between "effective pastoral ministry and being the visible conscience of the community."
What the next UUA President needs is a unifying concept that will empower us collectively to do both. For Peter Morales -- whom I support -- that concept is radical hospitality. http://www.moralesforuuapresident.org/pdf/PCDKeynoteaddress.pdf It inspires us both to nurture each other and to heal a broken world.
Our presence in the community not only makes a difference to the causes we care about; it also brings people to us. I'm a case in point. I was not a church-goer at all, but I am a long-time activist. At a peace rally one bitterly cold night, there were seven speakers. The final one was Rev. Bill Breeden, minister of our wonderful UU Church here. We went home warm and inspired -- and I found my way to the church, which was no longer the "church" I had avoided.
As we approach this important election, I hope we'll remember that we are not choosing the minister of a single church; we're choosing a national leader who can unify us while welcoming and enlarging our diversity.
David Keppel
Bloomington, Indiana
Hadn't really intended to offer this as a litmus on the current UUA Presidential election, but that seems to be what's on everybody's mind. I'm a Hallman supporter personally (and have even spelled out my reasons in this very blog). But what interests me now is this enduring perception of "UUism" as having "two wings," which goes all the way back to the distinctions drawn between the so-called "Parkerites" and the "Channing Unitarians" a century and a half ago. It reflects, I think, a well-established Hegelian historiography within our movement's own self-understanding, going back even to the way we frame the original Unitarian controversy itself. Each new generational "antithesis" spawns a fresh "synthesis," which in turn becomes the starting place for the next generation of restless critics. Progress, progress, progress..."onward and upward forever...."
An interesting exercise I participated in long ago: everyone in the room was instructed to open purse or briefcase and mentally divide everything in it into two mutually exclusive categories. Everything, two mutually exclusive categories.
There were few duplications. Plastic/not-plastic, red/not-red (mine), black/not-black, smaller-than-laptop/laptop-and-bigger (including a pair of running shoes). People were creative with their two mutually exclusive categories.
Since that time I have pondered our ability to divine two categories of things. You may remember a parlor game from the 60s: Are you Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Apollo or Dionysus? Beethoven or Mozart? Eliot or Dickens?
In our own lifetimes within the denomination, we have seen movement from thesis to antitheses to synthesis. I'm not sure any stage is ever obvious until it's history -- in other words, I don't think we can forecast the outcome of the election by noting where we've been. Voters will decide where we've been when they choose where we're going.
So getting away from Hallman/Morales (a shout-out to Morales from me), look at the Universalists who feel suffocated and ignored by the merger. David Bumbaugh has written quite effectively on it. The earlier split when the Congregationalists left the Unitarians and their real estate (I always say they kept Christ and we kept the silver; yes, I know it's glib, but it's still true). We can go back into UU history and find other schisms.
So much so that I don't like to sing that hymn, "We are a gentle, angry people ..." I don't think we have done ourselves any favors over the years with our anger. It hasn't been constructive and has separated more people from us than drawn them.
I occasionally use the old blue hymnal as a resource, and note that the words of Von Ogden Vogt which appear there often were dropped from the grey hymnal. His words tend toward self-flagellation for what we have left undone but ought to have done, and that doesn't work with the members of my congregation at all.David, you've hit on a point I hear more and more from UUs -- we must be gentle with ourselves.
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