"DAVID STROUPE!"

 “DAVID STROUPE!”

Our son David Stroupe was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on a snowy evening 45 years ago on January 31, 1980.  He has been a great gift to us and to so many others in this crazy world.  He currently teaches science education at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, after a long stint at Michigan State.

This year is the year of the Snake on the Chinese zodiac, and in that system, the snake symbolizes wisdom, elegance, and intuition.  David is a snake guy, so this is his year.  He is wise and has great intuition, but elegance is not one of his main qualities.  Indeed, when he was a graduate student at the University of Washington, getting his PhD in science education, his adviser and mentor Dr. Mark Windschitl    indicated that he was impressed with David’s intelligence and work habits.  Dr.  Windschitl told David that he would like to take David to some Congressional hearings, where he sometimes testified before Congressional committees.  He told David, however, that before he would consider taking him, that David would have to get one good pair of shoes – the shoes that he had seen David wearing did not fit that category.  We ended up helping pick out and pay for a “good pair of shoes.”

    As I said, David became a snake guy.  I’m not sure when exactly he crossed over to the world of herpetology, but he learned a lot of it in the creek in front of our house on Kirk Road in Decatur.  He went to Davidson College and was a biology major there.  He was an assistant in herpetology there, and I remember him calling me early in his snake career saying:  “Dad, I caught a snake today, and it bit me 5 times, but don’t tell Mom!”  I replied:  “Well, I hope that it wasn’t a poisonous snake,” and his retort was:  “Dad, I’d never pick up a poisonous snake.”  But, of course he did, as I found out later.

    He became known there as ‘The Snake Guy” because he was often the “go to” guy in what was then a small town – if you had snakes in your house, he would remove them for you.  He also did demonstrations on reptiles and amphibians with church and school groups.  In those demonstrations, it was clear that he was a natural teacher, and that is what he ended up doing.

We had a great time with him and Susan and Erin and Emma and Zoe at our 50th wedding anniversary this summer.  He and Susan organized it and were the emcees for it. Of course, there was dancing, where I once again was recognized as best male dancer.  At the end of the occasion, David and Susan announced that they had arranged for the City of Decatur to install a bench in Harmony Park in the Oakhurst neighborhood, where we labored and did ministry for over 30 years.  The plaque for that bench is in the photograph – if you live in the area, go see it sometime! Harmony Park is located on land where Caroline and I used to lead the Easter parade after Oakhurst worship for singing and proclamation.  It is also a park where we pushed the city of Decatur to establish safe space where Black youth could hang out without being harassed by the gentrifying businesses in the changing neighborhood.  So, we were glad for David and Susan to work this out for this space.

    David has written two books for Harvard University Press and edited others, and this year he is starting a term as editor of the journal “Science Education.”  We are so proud of him, but we are most proud that he has a wide heart and a keen mind– even for snakes.  These qualities make him such a great son, dad, husband, teacher, mentor, friend, and human being.  So many memories, so many stories to tell, so many stories to come!  We give thanks for him being in our lives!  Happy Birthday, David!

"MLK"

 “MLK”

One could hardly imagine a greater contrast on January 20 than the comparison between the national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., and inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States.  Though King has been sanitized over the 57 years since his assassination in Memphis, he was a powerful leader for justice and equity.  I will write more on Trump later, but for now, I will say that I have seen his spirit before in the neo-slavery South – Faubus, Wallace, Barnett, Talmadge.  The issue now, of course, is that he intends to make white supremacy even stronger again.  In light of this, I want to revisit a column that I wrote for The Atlantic in 2018, as they reflected on 1968. They asked me to write about Martin Luther King, Jr., and here is that column.  

Doubting MLK During a Strike in Memphis

Reprint from The Atlantic Online

A retired Presbyterian pastor looks back on 1968, when he participated in the civil-rights struggle but hadn’t yet embraced the principles of nonviolence.

Jan 13, 2018

    I was a senior in college in 1968 at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), when the garbage workers strike in Memphis came to the public eye.  I joined other Southwestern students who were part of that strike.  That movement was part of a continuing shift for me in my own consciousness, as I began to change from a white person raised in the segregated South to a white person who gradually began to see how captive I was to the power of race.

            I had been taught racism by really decent white people in my hometown on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta – my family, my church, my teachers.  I believed that white people were superior, and that black people would never be our peers or equals.  If at times my experience seemed to teach otherwise, I was like Thomas Jefferson in his writings on “Notes on Virginia.”  Though he agonized over the ideas of equality and slavery,  he indicated that he could not find evidence of the equality of people of African heritage.

Education was one of my paths out of this total captivity to race.  Though most of my public school teachers were believers in race, one of my English teachers, a Jewish woman in our small Arkansas town, suggested that I read Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” about apartheid in South Africa.  I read it, and in it I met my first black person.  Oh yes, I had seen many black people in my youth, but I had not considered any of them to be a person as I was.

            My college years began to expand my horizons, and I began to hang out with the first black students at Southwestern.   In my junior year, I was one of the leaders of demonstrations that helped to close down a restaurant that refused to serve one of my black friends.   As 1968 began, I joined other white and black young people around the country who had begun to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. and his way of nonviolence were not only irrelevant, but were counterproductive and even dangerous.   Though I was not yet swayed by H. Rap Brown’s emphasis on the fundamental nature of violence in American life, it seemed to be the only way that justice might come for people of African heritage.  

            I jumped into the garbage strike, going on marches, seeking to organize and educate others.  I was part of group of students who went to churches on Sunday mornings, standing up to interrupt worship to shout “Support the garbage strike.”  We would usually be escorted out of worship, but a few people were sympathetic.   I retired from the ministry in 2017, and I have often wondered what I would have done as a worship leader, if such interruptions had come in my time.  Fortunately, none ever did, and I’d like to think that it was because Oakhurst Presbyterian was such a progressive church, but I know that the issue remains in my heart.

            Many of us felt that there was a possibility of victory in the garbage strike, and when Dr. King agreed to come to Memphis to support the strike, we had ambivalent feelings.  It seemed to us that he was only trying to capture the headlines, and the organizing seemed to be going well without him.   When his first march was organized, it ended in violence, as black youth and police clashed.  Dr. King seemed stunned that the black youth did not hold him and his principle of nonviolence in high esteem, and he was returning to Memphis in early April of 1968 to organize a bigger march that he intended to stay nonviolent.   I had an opportunity to go to Mason Temple to hear what would be his last sermon on April 3, but to my eternal regret, my lack of respect for him and my cynicism kept me from attending.

            I was working in the college library on the evening of April 4, and when my shift ended a little after 6 PM, I was walking out of the library, and one of my black student friends came up to me to say, in anger and in disgust, that Dr. King had been shot and would likely not live.  He then asked me:  “Some of my friends are organizing for the revolutionary fight.  We want to buy guns.  Can you lend me some money to help buy guns?”  I was stunned by his revelation and by his question, and I did not know how to respond.  I have racked my brain, but I cannot remember whether I gave him any money or not.  I was a relatively poor student, and I did not have money to spare anyway. 

            Violence followed in Memphis and throughout the country – the great apostle of nonviolence was gunned down by white people, and it seemed like all hope was lost.  I remember the National Guard armored cars riding up and down the streets in Memphis, and I remember feeling lost and forlorn.  That feeling was strengthened by the assassination of Robert Kennedy two months later and by the violence of the police at the Democratic convention in that summer, followed by the election of Richard Nixon as president that fall.

            I have thought over these events many times since then, and I have gained great respect for Dr. King over the years – I wish that I had known then what I know now!  Though it is greatly diminished, the power of race remains in me.  And, though I understand the impulse and sometimes the agency of violence, I am firmly committed to the principle of nonviolent resistance which Dr. King developed so well.   The continuing struggle for equality for black people, for women, for immigrants, for LGBTQ people reminds me that this struggle is ongoing in American history.  I don’t know if 2018 will be similar to 1968 or not, but I do know that in all of our work, the two forces of love and justice must be kept in proper tension.  As James Cone indicated in his fine book on Dr. King and Malcolm X,  King began with love and moved towards justice, while Malcolm X began with justice and moved towards love.  Both of those must be present if we are to build and sustain movements and communities dedicated to equity and justice.

"CARTER AND TRUMP"

 “CARTER AND TRUMP”

We watched a lot of the proceedings last week as the life of President Jimmy Carter was remembered and celebrated.  Since he was a native Georgian, the local media covered everything, from the service at the Carter Center, to the service at the National Cathedral in DC, to the funeral in Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, where his body was laid to rest next to Rosalyn’s in Plains.  Much was said about his faith, his integrity, his rise to political power, his Presidency, and his post-Presidency.  What struck me most of all was the emphasis on his decency as a human being.  

We remember Carter’s presidency – we were pastors in Norfolk during those years, and we watched closely his attempts to rescue the American hostages from Iran.  The husband of one of our church staff members was involved in the attempted but abandoned rescue effort.  We were impressed that Carter decided early on not to use overt military force to seek to rescue the hostages.  Carter was caught in a policy trap set for many decades – the American use of military and monetary power to maintain a grip on the oil of the Mid-East.  When the first wave of the Arab revolutions came, the anger at the USA poured out.

As grandson Jason Carter put it at the Carter Center (where he is chair of the Board), President Carter was on time but also ahead of his time in regards to the climate and environmental crisis, getting the speed limits lowered to 55 on interstates and installing solar panels on the roof of the White House (which his successor Ronald Reagan removed in the beginning of the Reagan Revolution, which has now culminated in the ascendancy of Donald Trump). 

As we watched the services for Jimmy Carter, it was hard not to compare him to incoming president Donald Trump.  There could not be more differences between them.  Carter seemed to be guided by a genuine sense of his own and other’s humanity, and his faith in God kept him humble and open to his own need for reformation and change.  While Carter admitted in a Playboy interview that he had sinned by lusting after women other than his spouse, Trump has been convicted in civil and criminal courts of sexual assault and bragged about how he knew how to get women by grabbing them by their private parts and invading their space.  In many ways, Trump acts like Roman Emperor Caligula, while Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school as much as he could.  In no small touch of irony, the white Christian Right deserted Carter for Reagan in the 1980 election, and in the 2024 election, Trump won 80% of the white Christian Right vote. For a powerful (and scary) article about this flow to Trump, read my friend John Blake’s column on CNN on January 12 : https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/12/us/white-christian-nationalism-du-mez-cec/index.html.  But, let us also remember – Trump has no landslide mandate.  Had 115,000 votes changed in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris would be Madame President.

We had our struggles with Jimmy Carter, especially as he sought to take over the Oakhurst neighborhood with his Atlanta Project.  He believed that he knew it all and refused to listen to people like us, who had been in the trenches for awhile.  Fortunately, we knew the local coordinator of TAP, and we worked it out, even getting Rosalyn Carter to come to the church to see some of the programs. But overall, his humanity and his generosity shined through, as we saw in the services last week.  As we await the coronation of the would-be-emperor Donald Trump (about which I’ll have more to say soon), we give thanks for the life, leadership, and decency of Jimmy Carter.  

"ARE YOU ARYAN?"

 “ARE YOU ARYAN?”

    Today Congress certified that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in last November’s election, a day in stark contrast with the Trump-inspired insurrection at the last Congressional certification on this date in 2021.

    Today is  also the Day of Epiphany, or January 6 in the Western church. It marks the end of the season of Christmastide.   After this time the church switches from Christmastide to Epiphany, until the season of Lent arrives on Ash Wednesday (this year, that is March 5).

        Epiphany signifies a revelation, an opening in the individual imagination and in the imagination of the world.  The church tradition remembers this as the coming of strangers, of the Magi.  They were Gentiles coming to worship the baby Jesus and to proclaim that they had seen God’s revelation in this baby.  It is striking in Matthew’s account of this story in chapter 2 that the first people outside the family to see the baby are Gentiles, seers from another culture.  It is also striking that Matthew contrasts this worshipful attitude of the Gentiles with the murderous impulse of the rulers of the area, most especially King Herod.

Matthew’s story tells us that the Magi show up in Jerusalem, inquiring about the new ruler of Judea.  Herod, the ruler at that time, is filled with anxiety at this news, and he develops a plan to find this baby and kill him.  The Magi, however, counter his plan and do their work without revealing to Herod where the baby is in Bethlehem.  Herod reacts to this with horrific violence, ordering all the boys of Bethlehem ages 2 and under to be murdered.  It is a chilling and horrible penultimate chapter in the Christmas story.  Joseph,  the adopted father of Jesus, takes his family and flees as refugees to Egypt – we are glad that they were a welcoming country and did not have a wall built.

I was reminded of this story as I finished reading “My Lord, What A Morning,” an autobiography by the great contralto singer Marian Anderson.  Susan gave it to me for my birthday in November, and she noted that she found it in the “used “ section in the Avant Pop Bookstore in Las Vegas.  It was published in 1956 and went through five printings.  It is a bit dated, but many of the stories are still powerful.  For those young people who read this blog, Marian Anderson was an African-American opera singer who stunned many white people in the 1930’s and 40’s with her powerful and accomplished voice.  

In 1939, she sought to schedule a benefit concert at Constitution Hall in DC, but the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused her permission to do it because she was Black.  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt intervened and helped to schedule the concert at the Lincoln Memorial.  The DAR later relented, and Anderson sang at the Hall in 1943.

Anderson experienced this kind of thing many times, which she notes in her autobiography.  One such experience stood out to me.  In the 1930’s, she was touring Europe after Hitler had come to power in Germany.  While she was performing in Poland, she received a request from Germany to sing in Berlin.  Here is how she describes that process:

“I was not eager to appear in the Germany of those days…..My manager offered Berlin a single date.  The answer came back that this date would not be the best, but since there was no alternative, this would be accepted.  The fee was also acceptable.  There was only one other question – was Marian Anderson an Aryan?  My manager replied that Miss Anderson was not one-hundred-per-cent Aryan.  That ended the correspondence.”

“Are you Aryan? Are you white?”  Those questions are at the heart of our racial history, and as the Magi story reminds us, the first visitors to see the baby Jesus were not Aryan.  And as the Make-America-White-Again president-elect prepares to take office for a second time, we would do well to read this Epiphany story and Marian Anderson’s story again.  They will be at the heart of the next Trump administration, and we should be prepared to make our responses.